Kanu AI raises $11.7m to turn how staff work into software they own
Kanu AI has come out of stealth with $11.7m in funding. The Seattle startup builds software that runs inside a customer’s own cloud. Accel, BMW i Ventures and a16z speedrun joined a round led by Trilogy Equity Partners, the company said in a statement on Wednesday. “Companies have spent decades buying software built around someone […] This story continues at The Next Web
Kanu AI has come out of stealth with $11.7m in funding. The Seattle startup builds software that runs inside a customer’s own cloud. Accel, BMW i Ventures and a16z speedrun joined a round led by Trilogy Equity Partners, the company said in a statement on Wednesday.
“Companies have spent decades buying software built around someone else’s idea of how they should work,” said Karan Grover, Kanu AI’s founder and CEO.
Staff show Kanu how they do a task and connect the systems they already use. Kanu then builds those workflows into software that runs in the customer’s own cloud. Data stays with the customer, and Kanu reaches it through the customer’s existing permissions. Users can open each output to see what Kanu read and why it reached its conclusion. Workflows can include human review and approval steps.
Kanu says it cut one national customer’s analysis process from up to eight weeks to under 10 minutes. The process ran across PDFs, email, spreadsheets, CRM data and mapping systems. The customer is on track to cut its software costs by more than $1m this year, according to Kanu.
Grover founded Kanu just over a year ago. It says its revenue has more than doubled in every quarter since launch. Its customers work in commercial real estate, insurance, financial services and technology. The software is available through AWS Marketplace and Google Cloud Marketplace.
Kanu employs 10 people, John Cook reported for GeekWire . It plans to reach about 15 by the end of the year. Grover is a machine learning engineer, a three-time founder and a Y Combinator alumnus. He previously worked as an engineer at Amazon and DoorDash.
“Kanu is creating this future by enabling generated workflows to be truly production-grade: stable, scalable and secure,” said Josh Lu, general manager and partner at a16z speedrun.
In August, a16z speedrun also backed Space, an AI-native filesystem startup. In September, Euno raised a $23m Series A for its AI agent context platform. Meta is also building an enterprise platform of its own.
