No-code AI company Obviously AI, announces $3.6m in seed funding from TMV, B Capital Group and notable individuals

With this fresh round of funding, Obviously AI plans to double down on its growth and expand their best-in-class engineering team


SAN FRANCISCO, May 03, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Today, Obviously AI - a no-code tool that enables anyone to build and run AI models in minutes, without writing code - announced it is building on its launch in 2020 and moving out of beta, with a total funding of $3.6m. TMV, an early-stage seed fund based in New York and Chicago - led the round and took a board role with participation from B Capital Group, Golden Gate Ventures, Arka Venture Labs and several prominent bay area angels.

Armed with an understanding that most requests for building AI models came from business users who had limited options to get the critical insights they needed, Nirman Dave and Tapojit Debnath Tapu launched the public beta of Obviously AI in Feb 2020. Now, with 3,000+ users who have hosted over 82,000 predictive models, the technology platform has saved over 13.8 million hours of manual data science work for their companies' customers. In fact, the company has been named a “Top 8 no-code tool of 2020” by Towards Data Science and has been recommended by Forbes, pointing to Obviously AI’s position as a leader within the industry, overall.

"Obviously AI has reimagined the way in which we think about building and running AI models across the board. As a result, they are poised to continue disrupting the space and leading the industry by example," said Soraya Darabi, Co-Founder & General Partner of TMV. "We are proud to have led their seed round at TMV and look forward to helping the team continue to build the leading predictive technology of the future."

Traditionally, the process of automatically building a Machine Learning (ML) algorithm for predicting outcomes is called AutoML. The conventional process brute forces several ML algorithms on a dataset and picks one that gives highest accuracy, resulting in long waiting times and, in many cases, statistically insignificant predictions that don’t work well in the real world.

To address these challenges, Obviously AI built a proprietary technology called “Edge Sharp AutoML,” which delivers reliable models in under a minute. The technology works by first identifying the properties of a user’s data (e.g. types of features, sparseness, variance, etc.). It then uses these properties to intelligently shortlist only the top applicable ML algorithms, running each algorithm by automatically fine-tuning its hyper-parameters (aka settings) to eventually pick an algorithm that performs the best, both statistically and in terms of real-world performance.

"In today's world, its becoming more and more imperative to commoditize AI and put the power of building and running ML models into the hands of citizen analysts, rather than just a handful of programmers,” said Darshan Somashekar, Venture Partner at TMV. “Obviously AI has re-engineered the process with their technology, uniquely positioning the team to be at the forefront of this change by combining no code with AI, therefore helping today's modern business professionals be more efficient with their time."

In a matter of minutes and with a single click, Obviously AI packs the entire process of building AI models, explaining results, and predicting outcomes. This is achieved in three simple steps, including:

  • Obviously AI users start by connecting to their spreadsheets, CRM systems or databases.
  • They then pick the value they’re looking to predict (e.g., sales), and Obviously AI automatically builds a state-of-the-art AI model to predict those outcomes in less than one minute.
  • The model is delivered in a beautiful and shareable report, which users can then use to evaluate underlying factors, simulate “what-if” conditions and export predictions via API or through direct integrations like Adalo, Zapier, etc.

With this new round of funding, the platform is fundamentally reshaping how the modern business user thinks about and creates AI. This means putting the world’s most advanced algorithms in the hands of its users to predict lead conversion, build dynamic pricing, optimize funnel modeling and much more in just a matter of minutes. Looking ahead, Obviously AI will use the funding to grow the company’s R&D, expand sales and marketing teams, introduce additional time series & other cutting-edge algorithms and build an integration ecosystem that can further automate its predictive AI capabilities.

“We believe that making machine learning effortless represents our greatest opportunity to empower the lives of everyday business users,” said Nirman Dave, Co-founder & CEO of Obviously AI. “That’s why we’ve fundamentally designed the fastest and simplest data prediction tool for the modern business user. And now, with this latest funding, we’ll be able to double down and further accelerate our growth.”

To learn more, visit obviously.ai.

About Obviously AI:

Obviously AI is a no-code tool that enables anyone to quickly build and run AI models in minutes, without writing code. The platform is fundamentally designed for citizen business analysts to equip them with the superpower of AI, without a data science background. This means predicting everyday AI use cases like lead conversion, dynamic pricing, optimizing funnel modeling and much more in just a matter of minutes. Obviously AI has been backed by several leading silicon valley VC firms, named among top no-code AI tools by Forbes, Towards Data Science, Analytics Insight, etc. and trusted by over 3,000 users worldwide. Learn more on https://obviously.ai.

About TMV:

TMV is a leading early-stage venture fund writing first-checks into purpose-driven companies. Founded by Soraya Darabi and Marina Hadjipateras in 2016, TMV is paving the way for a next generation of founders addressing the care economy, the future of work, blue tech and reimagined sustainable solutions. As an integrated partner, TMV has helped companies like Ridwell make it easier to reduce and recycle responsibly, Bravely design an application to connect people with on-demand professional coaches, and Parsley Health develop doctor-led holistic health care. Across two funds, TMV has amassed a portfolio of 27 companies that are leveraging technology to ensure a better tomorrow.

Media Contact: press@obviously.ai