Chevy Chase AI company Hitloop has raised $7.5 million off the back of its founders' pedigree as well as a belief in the promise of AI to revolutionize business and, of course, turn a profit.
Hitloop is pre-revenue and still in the discovery phase for its product, but its offerings were enough to attract Menlo Park, California, venture capital firm Felicis Ventures, which led the round. Unnamed angel investors also participated.
The seed round illustrates just how hot AI technology is in the VC world. Hitloop has yet to formally reveal a direct purpose for its tech, though its founders did say it involves enterprise software. One in four dollars invested this year has gone to an artificial intelligence-related company, according to Crunchbase data. In Greater Washington, AI cybersecurity company CalypsoAI and AI-powered business travel management company Routespring pulled in funding off the promise of their AI technology.
Hitloop’s founding team includes CEO Michael Boufford, a former CTO of New York City HR software company Greenhouse Inc., and John Intrater, former senior director of product design at San Francisco cryptocurrency exchange platform Coinbase Global Inc. As a hybrid company with its lead investor in California, Hitloop could have easily scaled up on the West Coast but decided to grow its four-person team in Greater Washington.
“There's an incredible amount of talent and capable people who could be part of a startup ecosystem here,” Boufford said about the D.C. area. “There's relatively less going on than you might see in a place like San Francisco, which we think is going to give us the opportunity to hire some really spectacular talent.”
Boufford was on the founding team at Greenhouse and says he wrote one of the first lines of code for the company’s HR software that helps companies onboard new employees and make hiring decisions. He boasts of helping grow the company from the seed stage to $200 million in annual recurring revenue. As CEO of his own company, he hopes to pull off the feat again.
