Navigating the Rise of Generative AI: Value Generation Case Study at aiOla
This is part 2 in the blog series about New Era Capital Partners’ AI assessment framework. If you missed the first part, you can read it here.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) refers to the development of computer systems that can perform tasks that would typically require human intelligence, such as learning, reasoning, and problem-solving, by using algorithms and data. It has the potential to significantly impact society by revolutionizing industries, improving efficiency, and raising ethical concerns regarding privacy, job displacement, and bias. The impact of AI can already be seen today with the emergence of chatGPT and other generative AI companies and the impact it has had across industry. Investors need to have a clear perspective and framework to evaluate these companies and not fall victim to the hype. Below is an overview of how aiOla, a portfolio company of New Era Capital Partners (NECP), fits into NECP’s internal AI value generation framework.
How does aiOla fit into the AI application environment?
In today’s information-driven era, effective data management is crucial for making informed business decisions. While machines and software have robust data monitoring systems, human intelligence collection often relies on manual data recording. Unfortunately, this manual approach results in the loss of vital human-generated information, rendering it inaccessible. In the inspection industry in particular, human generated data is essential, but it is time consuming to input manually, and documents are often misplaced or lost in a sea of data. To address this challenge, aiOla captures spoken human intelligence and converts it into structured data. With aiOla, inspectors can focus on safety protocols, simply speaking their observations instead of manually editing an input sheet. By doing so, aiOla’s technology streamlines workflow operations by capturing speech in real-time. For one of aiOla’s clients, a Fortune 100 food manufacturer, this change resulted in a 30% increase in production uptime and a 45% decrease in inspection time.
What sets aiOla apart is its AI engine’s ability to comprehend industry-specific jargon and accurately differentiate between a regular conversation and mission-critical information by combining automatic speech recognition and natural language understanding. Remarkably, aiOla’s language processing capabilities extend to over 100 different languages, enabling it to operate effectively in diverse global contexts. Additionally, data produced by any user can be easily accessed through any widely used communication tools such as SMS or WhatsApp including any internal communication systems such as email, Slack or Teams.
The unique capabilities of aiOla has garnered the attention of New Era Capital Partners (NECP) as it aligns with several criteria outlined in the NECP AI Framework: Value Generation and Legitimacy. In addition to conventional due diligence practices, NECP utilizes the AI Framework to evaluate the value proposition and credibility of AI companies. In this second installment of the series, we will deep dive into aiOla’s value generation and specifically discuss its alignment with the NECP AI Framework.
Who is aiOla’s management team?
aiOla was co-founded and is led by experienced entrepreneurs Amir Haramaty and Guy Ernest. Amir, serving as aiOla’s CEO, worked in six startups throughout his career, most notably in the C-suite of two companies that were backed by well known late-stage venture capital funds and later acquired by Microsoft and Facebook. Guy Ernest, aiOla’s CTO, spent over 10 years in the Israeli Defense Force before founding two startups specializing in mobile search and personalization systems. Subsequently, Guy gained valuable experience at Amazon, where he assisted AWS customers in adopting machine learning technologies. Both Amir, Guy, and the rest of aiOla’s management team bring a wealth of expertise to aiOla, combining technical knowledge with business acumen. Their combined leadership abilities and entrepreneurial backgrounds have allowed aiOla to make significant strides in this emerging market.
What industries use aiOla and for what purpose?
aiOla’s proprietary and patented technology, which combines natural language understanding (NLU) and automatic speech recognition (ASR), offers a highly accurate and user-friendly solution. It seamlessly integrates into a customer’s existing systems, giving employees a chance to go hands-free while conducting inspections, audits, inventory analysis, or surveillance.
Despite a plethora of use cases, aiOla is focusing on the Food Safety and Airline industries where aiOla is particularly useful for generating measurable cost savings by minimizing downtime that would otherwise impact normal operations. Using aiOla, food inspectors save time (i.e., up to a 50% decrease in paperwork) and have the ability to record verbal data that is not typically included in food inspection sheets. In the airline industry, pilots use aiOla to efficiently complete pre-flight safety checks, saving enough time to complete up to one additional flight per day. The technology’s emphasis on automating essential functions within crucial operations drives growth with a strong product-market fit even in volatile markets.
Source: aiOla
Can aiOla maintain its effectiveness at scale?
aiOla utilizes a scalable infrastructure that remains adaptable to various use cases and customer sizes without requiring significant adjustments. The flexibility of the product extends to different languages, continuously improving its accuracy as it learns over time. This enables customers of all sizes and linguistic backgrounds to seamlessly integrate aiOla into their existing work streams.
Furthermore, aiOla’s business model is designed to scale alongside increased demand. As a value-added product, aiOla provides measurable benefits to its clients. To align its incentives with the success of its integration, aiOla charges customers a percentage of the savings achieved through its implementation. Regardless of the size of the business, aiOla’s compensation is tied directly to the positive outcomes it generates for its customers.
Conclusion
Coupling NECP’s AI framework with its standard due diligence process distinguished aiOla as an authentic AI company with clear value. At NECP, we see parallels between the way aiOla engages with AI platforms and the interplay between specialized software and personal computers. During the early days of personal computing, there were various competing hardware manufacturers producing PCs. However, tremendous value came from the development of niche software for specific verticals. Some examples of this phenomenon include Intuit’s Quickbooks for accounting, Adobe Photoshop for graphic design, and AutoCAD for engineering. Each of these applications relied on hardware from Apple, Dell, and Lenovo to operate to generate tremendous value independently. aiOla operates in a similar manner, powering its own AI with cloud services from companies like Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, and AWS to generate tremendous value within the Food Safety and Airline industries. aiOla’s vertical specialization gives the company a competitive edge in the AI application market. As a result, NECP invested in aiOla to accelerate its progress towards digitizing the collection of human intelligence.
This blog post was co-authored by John Malloy, intern at New Era Capital Partners, and Ziv Conen, Partner at New Era Capital Partners.
The authors wish to thank Avi Kapadia, Shira Gershon, Eugenio Sabbadini, Ran Simha, and Gideon Argov for their contributions to the post.
