The New York-based artificial intelligence startup Hebbia has just raised $130 million in Series B funding. The round was led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), with participation from Index Ventures, Google Ventures, and Peter Thiel, valuing Hebbia at approximately $700 million.
Founded by CEO George Sivulka in 2020, Hebbia aims to expand the application of artificial intelligence beyond simple chatbots. The company's flagship product, Matrix, is capable of handling complex queries in large-scale datasets, standing out among numerous traditional AI tools for its transparency and flexibility.
This sleek, spreadsheet-like interface allows users to build AI agents that can complete end-to-end tasks. Matrix can ingest structured and unstructured data from various sources, including regulatory filings, PDFs, and even audio and video clips.
Sivulka stated in the company's announcement, "AI should work like humans, not just chat back and forth." Matrix realizes this vision, enabling users to guide AI agents in completing tasks like guiding human analysts.
The platform's ability to handle various types of data has attracted the attention of industry giants. Currently, Hebbia's client base includes top asset management firms, law firms, banks, and even the US Air Force.
Alex Immerman from a16z believes that Hebbia is a disruptive product. "We are transitioning from Software-as-a-Service to Service-as-a-Software," he wrote, praising the AI agents built by Matrix for their ability to handle end-to-end tasks and present results in a spreadsheet format suitable for the finance industry.
Hebbia's impact has garnered widespread attention. During the Silicon Valley banking crisis, asset management firms used Hebbia to quickly generate regional bank risk exposure charts from millions of documents. Corporate lawyers utilized Matrix to quantitatively measure "market" terms in real-time, gaining an advantage in negotiations.
The significant investment and rapid adoption by major participants indicate a groundbreaking transformation in the company's interaction with data. The numbers speak for themselves. Over the past 18 months, Hebbia's revenue has grown 15 times, and the number of employees has quadrupled. Sivulka stated that this startup has accounted for over 2% of OpenAI's daily trading volume.
