Inflection AI has a new game plan after Mustafa Suleyman defected to Microsoft
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- Inflection AI unveiled a new strategy to focus on building empathetic chatbots for businesses.
- It comes after Mustafa Suleyman resigned as CEO and joined Microsoft with most of the team.
- The startup's new leadership team told VentureBeat that it's "well funded for 18 months."
Inflection AI seems to have found a way to steady the ship.
The startup laid out a rehashed strategy following its partial implosion about two months after CEO Mustafa Suleyman decamped to Microsoft along with most of its 70 staff.
Inflection's executive team told VentureBeat that its new plan of action is focusing on business-centric "empathetic" chatbots to help stand out in the highly competitive AI sphere.
Its new leaders hope its emotional quotient bots will set it apart from rivals. Inflection is now a 12-person team, which it plans to expand by recruiting more engineers.
Sean White, who took over as CEO, announced in a press release on Tuesday that Vibhu Mittal, a former senior Google scientist, has become chief technology officer, while Ted Shelton joined from Bain as chief operating officer.
However, there was no mention of whether it'll continue offering its main product, the "kind and supportive companion" chatbot Pi, to consumers. Instead, it seems like the company's repurposing it for corporate customers.
Inflection believes companies will want AI chatbots that are considered emotionally intelligent to deliver a more considerate and personal customer support experience, according to Shelton.
The company's also betting on businesses wanting bots to help employees in their work, or to even license the tech that makes its chatbots empathetic.
Shelton said a finance firm it's working with said it could take weeks to train a human worker to speak to customers as a call center agent. According to the report, the chatbot for businesses can allow firms to offer AI customer support agents with a particular tone and personality as its models are trained on people's emotive conversations.
Despite recent challenges, cofounder Reid Hoffman insists that a shortage of cash is not one of them. He told VentureBeat that Inflection has "real money" and is "well funded for 18 months." White also said it has the backing of its first investor Greylock, where Hoffman is a partner.
Last year, Inflection raised more than $1 billion from investors, including Bill Gates, Eric Schmidt, and Nvidia, and got $650 million from Microsoft to license its tech when Suleyman left to lead its AI efforts.
Inflection AI didn't immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider, made outside normal working hours.
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