Large language model companies like OpenAI and Anthropic have largely stolen the show among investors this year, but, as you may have noticed, VCs have increasingly been looking into more niche, so-called AI copilots that use AI to make some processes more efficient for humans—be it in healthcare or banking.
As a small sampling: Corti, a Copenhagen-based startup using AI to assist healthcare providers in assessing patients, just raised a $60 million round in late September; Truewind, an AI assistant for companies’ accounting and CFO functions, raised $3 million in seed funding around the same time last month; and atla recently pitched itself to investors during Y Combinator’s summer Demo Day as a startup building AI assistants to help in-house lawyers answer legal questions. Other more established companies, like PathAI, are essentially doing the same thing: PathAI’s cofounder and CEO Andy Beck told me earlier this year that their AI technology is able to analyze and interpret tissue samples and assist pathologists. For the human pathologists, in the future “their job is going to be to use their judgment, which will not be replaced by these systems, to interpret the output of the AI system.” And there are plenty of other examples.
