Startup Spotlight: Raleigh’s Pryon cracks top 100 ‘most promising’ AI startups list

Editor’s note: Each Monday WRAL TechWire highlights a North Carolina startup as part of our Startup Monday package.

RALEIGH — Artificial Intelligence startup Pryon, led by veteran tech entrepreneur Igor Jablokov, is gaining more traction.

It’s a member of private equity and venture capital firm CB Insights’ AI 100, a ranking of the most promising AI companies in the world selected from a “pool of over 6,000.” The only company from North Carolina to appear on the list, it’s the latest in a string of such accolades. (It made CNBC’s Upstart 100 List for 2019.)

“Pryon is proud to be named to the CB Insights AI 100,” said its CEO Jablokov. “Our team achieved a significant breakthrough.”

In February, the startup, founded in 2017, launched its first commercial product, a natural language processing (NLP) platform that helps companies add capabilities to their AI assistants, chatbots and help desks.

Using AI, the platform automatically reads, organizes, and retrieves data. “[It] fuses and orchestrates information from existing applications and storage, so teams can leverage AI to solve numerous challenges across a modern enterprise,” explained Jablokov.

Consumer manufacturer Georgia-Pacific is a customer, while a “well-known university,” is piloting the platform to create a help desk solution for faculty, staff and students.

Considering Jablokov’s former successes, his firm is well placed to be a serious player in this space. Back in 2011, he sold his former company, Yap, to Amazon. Its technology is now incorporated into smart speakers Alexa and Echo.

To date, the company has raised around $25 million.

Backers included the Rise of the Rest Seed Fund, a creation of AOL founder Steve Case’s Revolution, along with Breyer Capital and Greycroft, as well as Digital Alpha Advisors.

“From the beginning, Pryon has operated under one mandate: automate everything to make AI accessible throughout the enterprise,” Jablokov said in February.

“[It] is the first company to deliver a horizontal NLP platform that works ‘out of the box,’ empowering every department to harness AI. “