Symbyai, a SaaS platform that uses AI to streamline scientific research, has announced a $2.1 million seed round with participation from Drive Capital and CharacterVC.
Launched last year by Ashia Livaudais and Michael House, the platform offers an organized workspace that allows researchers to access papers, code, data and experiences within one location. It has AI features that help track progress and help with peer review and replication.
“It's also important to note that Symbyai is built on its own AI solutions, so users don't have to worry about accidentally sending sensitive information to Openai, humanity, or other companies,” Livaudais told TechCrunch. The researcher's intellectual property is the owner's property and is not used to train the underlying Symbyai models.
Livaudais said he started the company after dealing directly with the old-fashioned system of science review and creation.
“The foundations of Symby are formed while creating solutions to the problems I face every day, and I realized that my colleagues in the research community are looking for solutions to the exact same problem,” she said. “By the time we realised that we could repeatedly cut down on important research processes over months to hours, almost every discovery conversation I had started to see demand for commercialized versions.”
Symbyai works with academic publishers, research organizations and universities. Livaudais said he met investors by first joining the Gbeta program, which is part of Gene8Tor. Through the GBETA program, Livaudais connected with her first investors, including Antler. Ribodice said he also got a chance early on in Symby by investing in pre-seed rounds.
The company is currently planning to continue building the company using FreshSeed Capital and carry out its early partnerships.