In 2018, Daimon Labs’ founder and CEO, Dr. Ryan Benmalek, was the winner of LDV Capital’s Entrepreneurial Pc Imaginative and prescient Problem. A superb Ph.D. pupil learning Pc Science at Cornell College’s Pc Imaginative and prescient Lab beneath Serge Belongie, one in every of LDV’s specialists in residence, on the time, he introduced the “Neural Painter” – a novel methodology to design & prototype something you possibly can think about by merely describing it lengthy earlier than the overheated development of Generative AI.
After successful the competitors, Evan Nisselson, Common Companion at LDV Capital, has had common calls with Ryan for the previous 4 years to brainstorm how purposes associated to Ryan’s deep tech experience will revolutionize the world as we all know it immediately. The concept of constructing the next-generation human-like emotional AI platform excited the workforce of founders probably the most and led to the formation of Daimon Labs.
At LDV Capital, we spend money on folks constructing companies powered by visible applied sciences. We thrive on collaborating with deep tech groups leveraging pc imaginative and prescient, machine studying, and synthetic intelligence to research visible information. We’re the one enterprise capital agency with this thesis since 2012.
From left to proper: Dr. Ryan Benmalek (CEO), Dhruv Malik (CPO) & Dr. Xiang Zhang (Chief Scientist)
We’re excited to accomplice and spend money on the distinctive Daimon Labs workforce – deep technical founders constructing generative AI and enormous language fashions with human-like empathy. Their technological method has resulted in having the ability to practice state-of-the-art neural fashions on over a trillion information factors, greater than comparable giant language fashions available on the market, to ship synthetic intelligence that has reminiscence in addition to human-like empathy and the flexibility to tailor conversations.
Present approaches for constructing giant language fashions for human-like empathy are restricted by the next elements: they depend on exterior language mannequin APIs which have extraordinarily excessive coaching prices and are sluggish to iterate, they don’t seem to be skilled on a ample quantity of related information factors, or they’ve too many parameters for scalable unit economics. In consequence, there’s a market alternative for a high-quality conversational AI bot to allow emotional intelligence.
Daimon Lab’s know-how platform has the potential for deployment throughout many various verticals. They’re first addressing the issue of widespread loneliness in immediately’s society, significantly amongst youth. People are social animals, hard-wired to hunt out significant social connections. In response to information commissioned by Cigna, greater than half of US adults (58%) are thought-about lonely, and 80% of younger adults between 18-24 years outdated undergo from loneliness.
AI-powered digital beings with empathy who can act as companions can construct long-lasting relationships with members. Daimon Labs launched a personal closed beta for its chatbot in November 2022, the place members had been capable of chat and work together with their companionship bot on the net, Discord, and over SMS. Early beta members have already constructed particular relationships with Daimon Labs’ chatbot.
Daimon Labs is being developed by an all-star workforce of three co-founders together with 2 Ph.Ds. Ryan has additionally labored at Apple, the place he generated artificial information to enhance Siri query answering, and Google, the place he skilled large-scale multimodal fashions to speak with language fashions.
The opposite co-founders are Dhruv Malik, Chief Product Officer (MIT, Ivee, HYPR, T-Cell) & Dr. Xiang Zhang, Chief Scientist (NYU Ph.D. beneath the advisement of Professor Yann LeCun, Fb, Google AI).
We at LDV Capital led their oversubscribed $1.5M pre-seed spherical together with co-investors Information Neighborhood Fund, Myelin VC & strategic angels. See extra particulars in Kerry Flynn’s article “Unique: Daimon Labs reveals friendship chatbot” on Axios and join Daimon Lab’s mailing checklist to obtain beta entry to your private AI companion.
“We at LDV Capital are thrilled to accomplice with the Daimon Labs workforce to construct the digital beings of the long run with cutting-edge AI and human-like empathy. We’ve recognized Ryan for years since 2018 when he received the Entrepreneurial Pc Imaginative and prescient Problem at our LDV Imaginative and prescient Summit and was a Ph.D. candidate with Serge Belongie who can also be a LDV Capital Professional in Residence. We consider the workforce will revolutionize how AI will have the ability to kind significant connections with people and supply help with our each day lives from social interactions to studying new expertise to being a priceless companion,” says Evan Nisselson, Founder and Common Companion at LDV Capital.
We sit up for serving to Daimon Labs leverage our visible tech area experience and professional community as the one enterprise fund with a thesis of investing in folks constructing companies powered by visible applied sciences.
Be part of our ninth Annual LDV Imaginative and prescient Summit on March 28 (free digital occasion) and and be taught extra in regards to the Daimon Labs’ chatbot. Ryan will share Daimon Labs’ imaginative and prescient to ship empathetic synthetic intelligence that remembers you, evolves together with you, and might help you develop new expertise.
This publish was written in collaboration with Ash Cleary, an analyst at LDV Capital.
