Enso Technologies Secures USD 6 M for SMB-focused Guided AI Agents

Highlights:

• Enso plans to launch a “Guided AI Agent Builder” soon, which is aimed at developers interested in creating and providing AI agent services on their platform.
• Enso aims to assist small and medium-sized businesses by offering affordable access to advanced AI models, enabling task automation, and freeing up employees to work on more innovative projects.

Enso Technologies Ltd., an artificial intelligence SaaS startup, recently announced the launch of what it claims to be the first ecosystem of “guided AI agents” designed for small and medium-sized businesses.

Additionally, Enso Technologies has secured USD 6 million in a seed funding round led by NFX Ventures. Dark Mode Ventures and several angel investors, including Yassi Matias, Head of AI at Google Research, and Shmil Levy, a Former Partner at Sequoia Capital, also participated in the round.

Enso’s portfolio includes over 1,000 AI agents, each fine-tuned with domain-specific best practices to manage common tasks in more than 70 industries, such as accounting, research, data entry, digital marketing, and recruitment, according to the company.

According to Enso, AI agents are generative AI models, akin to the GPT-4 model powering OpenAI’s ChatGPT, but tailored to perform specific tasks. While they hold significant potential for work automation, they have primarily been utilized by larger organizations until now.

Enso reports that small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) employ approximately half of the American workforce and contribute to 43.5% of the U.S. GDP. Despite this, many SMBs still face significant challenges. Enso references recent research by Microsoft Corp., which shows that while 59% of SMB owners aim to generate new growth ideas, they are hindered by mundane daily tasks such as customer communications, accounting, administrative duties like data entry and scheduling, and planning.

Enso aims to assist these SMBs by offering cost-effective access to advanced AI models, enabling automation of many routine tasks, and allowing employees to focus on more innovative projects. To achieve this, Enso has developed an extensive catalog of AI service agents that can handle a wide range of common business tasks, which are available through monthly subscriptions.

Enso CEO Mickey Haslavsky noted that many SMBs are constantly navigating a “survival mode,” lacking the resources and expertise of larger competitors. Consequently, it becomes challenging for them to grow and compete. He believes that with the advent of AI, these businesses are falling even further behind.

“AI has fast become readily available to these larger companies, but not to small businesses. We created Enso by making AI accessible to companies that serve traditional industries so they can compete on an equal footing with larger corporations, instead of spending money on bank-breaking agency services,” Haslavsky explained.

A quick look at Enso’s homepage highlights the extensive scope of its Guided AI Agent offerings, which are designed to surpass the capabilities of traditional, multipurpose large language models like GPT-4. The company claims that conventional AI agents powered by these models often make errors, restricting smaller companies’ ability to achieve full autonomy.

Its Guided AI Agents cover various categories. For example, there is an AI-powered “Google Ranker” agent for managing a company’s search engine optimization, priced at USD 79 per month. Additionally, it offers dedicated agents for managing Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok accounts at USD 59 per month, as well as agents for guest posting on blogs, handling public relations, recruiting staff, posting Quora responses, and email sales tasks.

In addition to its own library of AI agents, Enso’s marketplace will soon accept submissions from third-party developers. In the coming weeks, it plans to launch a “Guided AI Agent Builder” for developers interested in creating and marketing AI agent services on its platform.

Gigi Levy-Weiss, Partner at NFX Ventures, noted that the AI revolution has predominantly overlooked smaller businesses despite their foundational role in the U.S. economy. He highlighted that larger organizations are advancing rapidly in AI capabilities, while SMBs still face challenges in handling fundamental administrative tasks.

He said, “Enso is one of the first companies recognizing this need and putting enterprise-grade AI in the hands of emerging companies, democratizing AI by providing access and scalability.”