SymbyAI, a SaaS platform that uses AI to streamline scientific research, announced a $2.1 million seed round with participation from Drive Capital and CharacterVC, among others.
Launched just last year by Ashia Livaudais and Michael House, the platform provides organized workspaces for researchers to access papers, code, data, and experiences within one place. It helps track progress and has an AI-feature that assists with peer review and replication.
“It’s also important to note that SymbyAI is built on a proprietary AI solution, so users don’t have to worry about accidentally sending confidential information to OpenAI, Anthropic, or any other company,” Livaudais told TechCrunch. The researchers’ intellectual property remains the property of the owners and is not used to train SymbyAI’s underlying models.
Livaudais said she started the company after dealing firsthand with the archaic system of reviewing and creating science.
“The foundations of Symby were formed while creating a solution to a problem that I was facing every day, and then realizing that my colleagues in the research community were looking for solutions to the exact same problems,” she said. “By the time we realized that we could successfully and repeatedly shorten critical research processes from months to hours, demand for a productized version started to emerge from almost every discovery conversation I had.”
SymbyAI works with academic publishers, research organizations, and universities. Livaudais said she met her investors by first taking part in the gBeta program, which is part of gener8tor. Through the gBeta program, Livaudais connected with her first investors, including Antler, which Livaudais said took an early chance on Symby by investing in its pre-seed round, too.
The company now plans to use the fresh seed capital to continue building out the company and fulfill initial partnerships.