Contextual AI, a startup selling a tool to improve the performance of artificial intelligence models, raised an investment of $80 million as part of a Series A funding round.

The mentioned company, which is based in Mountain View, California, did not disclose information about its value. With a high degree of probability, the corresponding indicator increased after the Series A funding round. The PitchBook data provider claims that the startup’s value is at around $ 609 million.

The funding round for Contextual AI was led by venture capital firm Greycroft. Investors such as Bain Capital Ventures and Lightspeed also took part in this process. The mentioned investors in 2023 made financial injections of $20 million into the launch of the company.

Contextual AI’s Chief Executive Officer Douwe Kiela previously supervised a team at Meta that invented a technique known as retrieval augmented generation (RAG). It is worth noting that AI specialists have been using RAG more and more recently. This technology overcomes the limitations of off-the-shelf artificial intelligence models, such as hallucinations, which reduce the accuracy of responses to user queries.

The startup intends to direct the received investments to the scaling of RAG.

It is worth noting that during the period of expanding the use of artificial intelligence, the issue of cybersecurity is being updated. Fraudsters also have access to advanced technology, which is why their activities have become more difficult in terms of detection capabilities. Against this background, user awareness is important. For example, an Internet search query such as how to know if my camera is hacked will allow anyone to get information about signs of unauthorized access to the device.