- Levity’s No-Code AI platform – which just launched in open beta with free trial access – enables non-technical people to build custom AI-powered workflow automations through easy-to-use AI Blocks and templates.
- Levity empowers companies of all sizes to automate and speed up processes and reduce costs by integrating AI Blocks with a wide range of tools, such as Gmail, Outlook, Google Drive, Dropbox, Airtable.
- Levity makes it easier for companies to automate business workflows that include unstructured data that only humans or AI can process.
- This $8.3M Seed round was co-led by Balderton Capital and Chalfen Ventures, with participation from existing investors Angular Ventures and System.One, together with Scott Belsky (Founder of Behance), Des Traynor (Co-Founder of Intercom), Kevin Gidney (VP AI/ML at DocuSign) and others.
- The funds will be used to further expand the Levity team and accelerate product development.
Wednesday 12 October, 2022:
Levity – the No-Code AI automation platform enabling businesses of all sizes to unlock the power of bespoke AI and take charge of their workflows – has raised $8.3 million in seed funding, co-led by Balderton Capital and Chalfen Ventures. Existing investors Angular Ventures and SystemOne also participated, joined by new investors Scott Belsky (Founder of Behance), Des Traynor (Co-Founder of Intercom) and Kevin Gidney (VP AI/ML at DocuSign).
Founded by Gero Keil and Thilo Hüllmann, Levity believes AI should be available for as many businesses as possible and wants to empower companies – even those with little technical resources or AI knowledge – to take advantage of the power that tailored AI can bring. In this way, they want to level the playing field for companies of all sizes so that the productivity gains and advantages that come from automation are not restricted to those with the deepest pockets.
Simplicity meets sophistication
Through Levity’s guided AI Block builder and templates, businesses can confidently automate workflows in minutes. Behind a simple interface is an advanced suite of sophisticated AI technologies. Unlike most AI software tools that solve a single use case, Levity combines the most advanced technologies – natural language processing (NLP) and computer vision – in a single horizontal platform that enables users to automate a wide range of processes. The whole process of getting started, including signing up, creating an AI Block, and receiving the first predictions can take as little as five minutes to complete.
The power of this approach is that Levity can be used on unstructured data types – such as images, texts, and documents. Levity’s customers range from fashion and real estate to shipping, marketing, social media, scientific research and more.
Typical use cases include:
- Automatically tagging and routing incoming emails or email attachments
- Categorizing and triaging customer support tickets
- Sorting incoming documents into respective folders
- Tagging visual inventory data, such as fashion items, product photos or real estate listings
Instead of retrofitting tools, Levity integrates with a wide range of tools, such as Gmail, Outlook, Google Drive, Dropbox, Airtable and many more, which enables customers to plug AI Blocks directly into their workflows. This approach allows companies to build automations that align and integrate directly with their specific needs – a task that would normally require in-house and expensive data science teams to complete – and makes Levity’s platform modular and scalable.
All while allowing users to save time and money automating processes that they could not have automated before. As a testament to just how simple and empowering Levity’s platform is, more than 95% of users have no prior technical experience, yet are training AI Blocks and automating workflows on a daily basis. The system is also SOC2 Type I certified and GDPR compliant, ensuring that data is secure across the platform.
A unique perspective
At the heart of Levity’s success to date is that neither Thilo, nor Gero had specifically pursued data science during their academic career, yet had faced the challenge of implementing automation through their previous roles. They realized the need for a product like Levity, that non-engineers could learn easily, and were able to approach it from a fresh, customer- and design-focused angle. In line with this, simplicity and usability are at the core of Levity’s product, empowering people in all roles and businesses to unlock the power of advanced AI.
Levity starts where rule-based automation ends
As automation is on top of many businesses’ agendas, they are being met with a number of hurdles and frustrations. Namely, the majority of existing automation tools, such as Zapier and IFTTT, are limited to simple, rule-based automation use cases because they only work with structured data. Yet 80% of business processes rely on the use of unstructured data. This includes rich media such as texts, documents and images. The nature of these data types makes it impossible to automate using rules, without the use of AI and machine learning.
Consequently businesses rely heavily on slow and tedious manual processes. To navigate this, companies are faced with integrating and paying for multiple, niche tools, or hiring expensive data science teams to remain competitive – two options that are often out of reach economically and technically for the majority of SMEs. Levity breaks down these barriers, providing access to the platform’s suite of tools and support on a subscription basis, with prices starting at $200 per month and varying based on a customer’s needs.
One such customer is Incendium, a US-based outbound growth consultancy with a data-driven approach. They use Levity to automatically categorize email replies to outbound sales campaigns to automate further processing. Before Levity, they manually logged up to eight data points for every email received. Nate Houghton, their co-founder comments: “A solution like Levity is something we have always had in the back of our mind, however once we reached a sort of critical mass it became prudent to explore this solution. Immediately, the flows built using Levity saved us time and brain space by keeping our inboxes clean and organized while also serving the critical function of accurately recording email responses. Levity is allowing our team to focus time/effort on more impactful, strategic work which over time will be accretive to both our top and bottom lines.”
Building on momentum
Today’s fundraising announcement follows a year of increasing demand and growth for the startup which recently culminated with the launch of the company’s open beta. Since this launch in August, Levity’s platform has completed more than 3.2 million predictions across its user base. The funding allows Levity to continue expanding its team and to bring its product to market to help even more businesses capitalize on the rising need and benefits that AI is bringing to industries globally.
Gero Keil, co-founder and CEO of Levity said: “There are swathes of businesses being completely left out and underserved when it comes to AI and automation, as large firms and tech teams continue to build tools that are out of reach of everyday people. Businesses and their customers deserve the same opportunities to reap the benefits of AI and automation as their bigger rivals and with Levity, we’re committed to opening up such opportunities and leveling the playing field for companies of all sizes.”
James Wise, partner at Balderton Capital said: “There is an increasing divide between companies with the means to capitalize on AI and automation, and those smaller businesses who lack the resources to do so. Levity is on a mission to close this divide. By making machine learning more accessible and affordable, businesses of all shapes and sizes can truly benefit from the power that automation brings.”
Mike Chalfen, founder of Chalfen Ventures said: “I love businesses that uncover latent needs, and I have been investing in applied AI for 15 years so I have long seen the barriers to operationalising AI for everyday business use. So I knew when I met Gero and Thilo that Levity could be special. Their ability to look at AI through fresh eyes has resulted in a product that delivers true value quickly and real impact for business customers everywhere. The best products are those that manage to present advanced and complex tools in a simple way and that’s exactly what the Levity team has built.”
Gil Dibner, partner at Angular Ventures said. “When we backed Levity initially, Gero and Thilo had a plan to truly democratize machine learning - to make it possible for anyone to build their own ML-powered workflow and use it to empower greater productivity across thousands of use cases in daily life. It’s very exciting to see that vision becoming a reality as the team has ardently iterated on the product and is gradually bringing that vision to life.”
About Levity
Levity’s No-Code AI automation platform empowers companies to speed up processes, reduce costs and frees people from mundane, time-consuming tasks, allowing them the time and resources for creativity, whatever the level of technical expertise in the business. The platform combines a suite of machine learning tools with a simple, easy-to-use AI Block builder and templates. Levity is on a mission to level the playing field for businesses of all sizes, by making it easier for companies to process unstructured data that only AI can truly automate. Levity is backed by some of Europe’s leading investors, including Balderton Capital, Chalfen Ventures and Angular Ventures and its open beta is now live.
About Balderton Capital
Balderton Capital is a leading venture firm focused on backing the best European-founded technology companies. In the two decades since its founding, Balderton has worked with hundreds of extraordinary founders and raised $4.5bn across ten funds to support businesses at both early and growth stage. Previous investments include Depop (Etsy), Digital Surgery (Medtronic), Frontier Car Group (OLX Group), Flywire (NASDAQ: FLYW), Nutmeg (JPMorgan Chase), Peakon (Workday), Recorded Future (Insight Partners), Sunrise (Microsoft), Talend (NASDAQ: TLND) and Yoox Net-a-Porter (BIT: YNAP). Balderton’s current portfolio includes: Aircall, Beauty Pie, Carwow, Citymapper, Contentful, ComplyAdvantage, Darktrace (LSE: DARK), Dream Games, GoCardless, Graphcore, Healx, Infarm, Kobalt Music, Labster, Lendable, Prodigy Finance, Revolut, Sophia Genetics (NASDAQ:SOPH), Tessian, THG (LSE: THG), Vestiaire Collective and Zego. balderton.com
About Chalfen Ventures
Chalfen Ventures is Mike Chalfen's VC firm. Mike backs software startups aiming to grow and dominate new and often unusual markets. He has backed companies such as King, Lokalise, Tipalti, Tray.io and Snyk. Investing from day 1 through series A, Chalfen Ventures often leads rounds, but is always flexible. Mike operates as a solo VC, with no distractions from working closely with the entrepreneurs who have chosen him. chalfenventures.com
About Angular Ventures
Angular Ventures is a venture capital fund based in London, Tel Aviv, and New York with $200M under management. Angular is a first-check partner for European and Israeli companies building globally significant businesses and invests across the modern enterprise stack and in frontier technologies. angularventures.com
