To stay competitive, some companies are rushing to adopt AI, but they may be unsure of the best way to integrate AI into their business. Ilya Varchanov, co-founder and CEO of Team-GPT, thinks he has the answer to their concerns.
In 2023, Varchanov and Ilko Kacharov, Yavor Belakov, Katya Vapsarova, and Maria Varchanova launched Team-GPT as a software suite of AI tools (such as Claude and ChatGPT) that companies can integrate into their workplace systems. Valchanov said offering a suite makes it easier for companies to manage these tools. Otherwise, separate subscriptions are required for each feature. He also said there is a privacy element.
“If you use your own model, you can deploy it on-premises and not share your data with OpenAI or Anthropic,” he told TechCrunch. This means that companies can use Team-GPT to deploy AWS servers without retaining any data, for example.
Team-GPT also offers online courses on how to use certain AI tools and has enterprise features such as platform management and group mapping.
Valchanov said Salesforce and Johns Hopkins are already using Team-GPT with 45,000 clients. On Tuesday, the company announced a $4.5 million seed round led by True Ventures, with participation from angel investors including Pact and former OpenAI employees, Varchanov said.
Still, as a founder based in Bulgaria, he said it is still very difficult for his company to raise funding. “We're Silicon Valley outsiders, and we wanted to grow up in Silicon Valley,” he says. He went to London to meet with European venture capital and then spent two months in San Francisco building relationships to meet with some investors. “We met with 85 VCs,” he said.
Fundraising took about three months in total. He counts OpenAI, Claude, Dust, and Langdock as competitors. What makes Team-GPT different, he says, is that it seeks to serve medium to large enterprises that are interested in customization and implementing technology with their own data. .
Team-GPT will use the new funding to expand its team and increase its product offering.
This article has been updated to correct the spelling of Iliya Valchanov's and Ilko Kacharov's names.