Palo Alto-based Diffbot has proclaimed itself the leading arms dealer in coming AI wars after raising $10 million in Series A funding.
Diffbot has developed a robot that is working to organize information from all over the Web into the world s largest database of knowledge. The robot, which works without human oversight, recognizes, reads, understands and monitors product pages, news articles, discussion forums, videos, pictures and more, according to the company. Businesses can gain access to this data when they sign up for Diffbot plans, ranging from $299 to $3,999 per month.
We ve developed a business model for AI that works and I m excited with this new investment to accelerate our mission even further, founder and CEO Mike Tung wrote in a company news release Thursday. Structuring the world s knowledge is within sight.
Diffbot s latest funding round was led by China-based Tencent Holdings Limited and Palo Alto-based Felicis Ventures, and joined by Amplify Ventures and Valor Capital. Other backers include Sun Microsystems founder and Google s first investor Andy Bechtolsheim, SpaceX and Tesla investor Bill Lee, and early Google employee Georges Harik.
Diffbot turned a profit in the fourth quarter of last year, making it one of the first artificial intelligence companies to become profitable, Tung wrote in an email Friday. The company hasn t disclosed internal valuation numbers.
Diffbot, which employs a team of 12 AI engineers, already has developed a database larger than Google s Knowledge Graph, according to the company. Diffbot customers include Cisco, Adobe, Microsoft, eBay and Salesforce. The company s news release boasts that the Diffbot robot reads and understands the Web better than a team of humans.
Image: Diffbot logo (Diffbot).
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