Many large companies want to join the AI revolution, but many feel it is too early to be tied to one basic model. This means there is a market for layers between enterprises and large-scale language models (LLMs). Companies can use this to easily choose an LLM without having to always commit to one platform.
This is the market Langdock is targeting with a chat interface that sits between LLMs and businesses. The Germany-based startup recently raised $3 million in a seed round led by General Catalyst and European seed stage partner La Famiglia.
“Companies don't want to be vendor locked into one LLM provider,” Langdock co-founder and CEO Lennard Schmidt told TechCrunch. “So we abstracted that with an interface that allows businesses to choose between different vendor underlying models that their employees can use.”
Langdock's chat interface allows companies to leverage underlying models, open source models, or host and make their own models accessible, Schmidt said.
This funding round includes Y Combinator as well as prominent German founders such as Rolf Schromgens (Trivago), Hanno Renner (Personalio), Johannes Reck (GetYourGuide), Erik Muttersbach (Forto), and around 25 others. Angel investors also participated.
In particular, there is a European trickery here. Mr Languedoc is “actively” committed to the idea that he wants to integrate LLM safely and securely in a way that businesses within the EU comply with regulations.
This means employees can work in a more closed environment, such as creating prompt libraries, using multiple LLMs, and adding confidential documents.
In addition to chat interfaces, the company also offers security, cloud, and on-premises solutions.
Langdock claims to have many customers including Merck, GetYourGuide, HeyJobs, and Forto. Merck has rolled out the startup's interface to 63,000 employees. Walid Mehanna, chief data and AI officer at Merck, said in a statement: “We are early adopters of his GenAI and believe we are witnessing a paradigm shift in how employees can leverage technology to become more effective and efficient in their daily work lives.”
Languedoc is not alone in this area.
Paris-based Dust has raised €5 million so far and is backed by Sequoia. The company is building an interface that companies can use to leverage his LLM for a variety of use cases such as customer service, internal reporting, and research. In contrast, Langdock's chat interface covers a wide range of use cases and can be used by all types of staff.