Virtual Writing Assistant Startup Compose.ai Raises $2.1M

Compose.ai has closed a $2.1 million seed funding round led by Craft Ventures to continue developing a universal auto-complete run with artificial intelligence. The startup currently offers a free Chrome extension (with a waitlist of more than 7,000 people) that handles auto-complete tasks in any text box the browser reaches and improves how well it can anticipate a user with practice.

AI Composure

Founded in 2020, Compose.ai released its Chrome extension a few months ago after participating in the 2021 winter session of Y Combinator’s accelerator program. Once the extension is activated, Compose.ai’s assistant begins offering suggestions for finishing sentences and paragraphs in any text space, from feedback forms to search engines. The startup’s Y Combinator bio page compares the resulting extension to Google’s autocomplete for search combined with the digital versatility of Grammarly’s own browser extensions used for spotting and correcting spelling and grammatical.

Compose.ai’s founding took place amidst the excitement over the expansive and powerful GPT-3 language model by OpenAI. The startup initially relied on OpenAI’s creation to perform tricks like generating emails out of bullet points and compressing longer messages into cogent summaries, as shown in the demo video for Product Hunt produced by Compose.ai. The company switched to creating its own language model, as reported in TechCrunch, but did not explain why it made the shift. The exclusive license for GPT-3 acquired from OpenAI may have something to do with it, or it could just be that the company saw more opportunity to craft the AI they wanted. The result is a layered AI that learns what to suggest based on who is writing and where they are putting the text.

Automated Activities

Compose.ai’s long-term vision involved getting its service used in corporate contexts. The AI could add a company’s style to the facets of writing it learns. The result would be a helpful writing assistant that can sound like individual employees within the context of how they communicate on a professional level. Though the Chrome extension is free, the company is developing a $10 per month subscription service for those who want the full personalization and learning option. Those ambitions fit right in with fellow Craft Ventures portfolio member, Copy.ai. Copy.ai raised $2.9 million from the VC firm in March to grow its client list, which recently surpassed 3,000 paying customers.

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