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Ask HN: Examples of startups focused on AI?

6 points| machilin | 12 years ago

Hello there, I'm interested in dabbling with some projects related to artificial intelligence. And I would love to know of any big startups focused on AI, or build products enhanced with AI. Could you guys name a few? I know of some such as Hunch, Siri.

One pattern I noticed among most of these companies is that typically do not become really BIG companies or generate billions in revenue. So what's the prospect for someone looking to build a company focused on AI, or enhance current products with AI, e.g marrying real estate with AI, or search with AI? Or perhaps social networking with AI?

13 comments

nekopa|12 years ago

A little off-topic, but why don't you apply AI to a hot startup? I see your question as similar to saying 'Any hot rails startups?' AI shouldn't be a goal, but a means to an end. You are in a perfect outsiders position to look at various startups and say 'Hmm, maybe AI could help them with ...'

Just an idea...

machilin|12 years ago

That's my exact thought. Instead of building "dumb" if-else web app, maybe we could build the next-gen of web apps enhanced with AI that might prove to disrupt incumbents. I just wanted to see some examples of some of them at work to get a rough feel of the state of this prospect.

GHFigs|12 years ago

http://anki.com/ -- Some will remember them from the incongruous toy car demo at beginning of the WWDC Keynote.

sdrinf|12 years ago

See a collection of mine on stackoverflow, specifically constrained to products, where solving the intelligence problem have a direct impact on the bottom line:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1050696/the-business-of-a...

josephpmay|12 years ago

Not exactly a startup, but Grok (https://www.groksolutions.com/index.html), which was founded by Jeff Hawkins and used to be called Numenta, is a big AI company.

evgenyp|12 years ago

https://tempo.ai/ -- A Siri/Google Now/Cue/Donna competitor, based at Stanford Research Institute (SRI)

machilin|12 years ago

Thanks for the answer. Their AI tech is quite amazing and with their 10M funding, they might be the next big thing since Siri.

josephpmay|12 years ago

Their demo video is painful to watch.

dangrossman|12 years ago

Sift Science, which advertises jobs here every once in a while.

seiji|12 years ago

Every mention of AI should specify what you mean by "AI." Do you mean just k-means clustering? Collaborative filtering? Automatic image recognition? Automatic novel writing? Automated driving? Automated surgery? Automated world-level economic planning?

Lots of levels to explore.

machilin|12 years ago

Yes, I agree. But I'm interested in areas like machine learning, weak AI areas in which your computer can make smarter personal or business decisions for you, which might actually be helpful the largest possible group of people.

Irishsteve|12 years ago

Google ?

mhassankhan|12 years ago

Yes was about to say that, Google is a big example of a company that uses, researches, and develops AI tech. And they do use AI for search...