Seattle-based artificial intelligence startup Cimba.ai launched out of stealth Tuesday with $1.25 million in pre-seed funding that it raised at the start of last year.
Cimba co-founder and CEO Subu Biswas said the startup has nine employees but could grow to 20 or 30 employees after it raises its next funding round, which Cimba aims to raise during the second quarter. Biswas said the startup hasn't decided how much it plans to raise.
"We are still in a private beta," Biswas said. "We are gradually rolling it out to major customers. We're probably going to go public entirely with the product where people can come and sign up sometime in Q2."
Cimba, founded last year, helps clients make better use of company data. An advertising client, Biswas said by way of example, could use Cimba to launch an effective, data-driven marketing campaign using simple commands. In the past, he said, these clients would have to pull data from a variety of sources every week, a time consuming-task.
Biswas added that Cimba has a small handful of clients but is expanding that list. He didn't name any current customers.
Although Cimba calls Seattle its headquarters, Biswas is the only employee based in the area. Most of the company's headcount is based overseas. Biswas said Cimba will look to boost its presence in the Seattle area after raising its next funding round. He added that Cimba plans to land that funding and grow its team here before looking for office space.
Ripple Ventures led the round, while SeaChange, ParkVC and others participated. Ripple has invested in the employee onboarding and offboarding platform Harmonize, as well as the project management tool ZenHub.
Before launching Cimba, Biswas spent close to four years at Airbnb, where he worked in engineering, according to his LinkedIn page. He spent more than five years as a software engineer at Microsoft before that.
According to Biswas, most companies are trying to use artificial intelligence in their day-to-day operations.
"We are building this platform for them to use (generative) AI more effectively," Biswas said.
