Sentient Technologies

Sentient Technologies is an American artificial intelligence (AI) based technology company based in San Francisco.[1] Sentient was founded in 2007 and has received over $143 million in funding since its inception.[2][3] As of 2016, Sentient is the world's most well-funded AI company. Focused on e-commerce and online content as well as trading,[4]

Sentient Technologies
Formerly
Genetic Finance Holding Ltd.
IndustryTechnology
Founded2007
HeadquartersSan Francisco
Key people
Mark Elfenbein (Chief Revenue Officer)
Products
  • Sentient Aware
  • Sentient Ascend
Websitesentient.ai

History

Sentient originally operated in stealth mode as Genetic Finance Holding Ltd. The company was founded in 2007 by Antoine Blondeau, Babak Hodjat and Adam Cheyer who created the natural language technology that led to Siri, Apple's voice recognition software.[5][6] Sentient raised a $2 million Series A round of funding, and $38 million in a Series B round led by Horizons Ventures.[5] Sentient emerged from stealth mode in November 2014 with $103.5 million in Series C funding.[5][3][7]

Sentient worked with Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory to analyze blood pressure to predict the likelihood of sepsis in ICU patients.[5][2] The technology was researched in association with Saint Michael's Hospital at the University of Toronto.[8] The platform has also been used to successfully automate financial services for Sentient's subsidiary, Sentient Investment Management.[9]

In 2015, Sentient launched an AI powered visual intelligence and personalization platform leveraging deep learning and online learning, and recruited Mark Elfenbein to be its Chief Revenue Officer [10] Shoes.com, a Vancouver-based online shoe retailer, was Sentient's first retail customer for this service.[8][11][12] Since its launch, Sentient has other retailer customers.[13][5][14]

Sentient Ascend was launched in September 2016 as a SaaS AI based conversion rate optimization platform, largely based off the same AI methods used in its financial technology IP.[15][16]

In 2019, Sentient Technologies was dissolved selling off Sentient Ascend to Evolv[17] and much of its AI intellectual property to Cognizant.[18]

Technology

Sentient's platform[8][19] combines evolutionary computation, which mimics biological evolution, and deep learning, which is based on the structure of nervous systems.[5] Sentient's algorithms work across as many as two million CPU cores and 5000 GPU cards across 4,000 physical sites across the world, making it one of the largest known systems dedicated to AI.[4][20]

gollark: I mean, at the extreme end you could have everything be done by one syscall, which does *not* seem better.
gollark: I mean, it would be weird if it didn't.
gollark: Sure?
gollark: Overloading things when they work quite differently doesn't actually make stuff *simpler*.
gollark: I don't think it ends up "simpler" as much as "about the same".

References
  1. Robin Wigglesworth (May 5, 2016). "AI pioneer Sentient to open equity fund to outside investors". Financial Times.
  2. Tom Simonite (June 1, 2015). "AI Supercomputer Built by Tapping Data Warhouses for Their Idle Computing Power". MIT Technology Review.
  3. Jack Clark (November 24, 2014). "AI Startup Sentient Raises $103.5 Million in Funding". Bloomberg.
  4. Madhumita Murgia (October 19, 2015). "World's most funded AI company, Sentient Technologies, launches online shopping product". Telegraph.
  5. Deborah Gage (November 24, 2014). "Artificial Intelligence Company Sentient Emerges From Stealth". The Wall Street Journal.
  6. Adam Satariano (February 6, 2017). "Silicon Valley Hedge Fund Takes On Wall Street With AI Trader". Bloomberg.
  7. "Artificial intelligence startup Sentient Technologies raises $103.5M". San Francisco Business Times. November 25, 2014.
  8. Quentin Hardy (November 16, 2015). "Artificial Intelligence Draws New Connections for Personalization". The New York Times.
  9. Gian Volpicelli (March 30, 2016). "Sentient Technologies is using AI to tackle deadly diseases". Wired.
  10. www.bizjournals.com https://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/potmsearch/detail/submission/5867352/Mark_Elfenbein. Retrieved 2020-07-18. Missing or empty |title= (help)
  11. David Gilbert (March 18, 2016). "From DeepMind To Watson: Why You Should Learn To Stop Worrying And Love AI". International Business Times.
  12. David Murphy (November 24, 2016). "Spotlight: Sentient Aware". Mobile Marketing.
  13. David Richards (January 23, 2017). "Technology The Key to Fighting Amazon Says Experts As US Retailers Shut Up Shop". Channel News.
  14. Craig Guillot (December 2016). "Making Changes". NRF.
  15. Ben Davis (November 2, 2016). "Could AI kill off the conversion optimisation consultant?". Econsultancy.
  16. Rachael Power (September 19, 2016). "Sentient launches AI based conversion rate optimisation tool". Marketing Tech.
  17. Sudipto Ghosh (June 14, 2019). "Evolv Technologies raises $10m and acquires Sentient Ascend". Martechseries.
  18. Tiernan Ray (February 28, 2019). "IT leader Cognizant evolves AI beyond 'hill climbing'". CBS Interactive.
  19. "What Do AI And Fighter Pilots Have To Do With E-Commerce? Sentient's Antoine Blondeay Explains". GE Reports. December 5, 2016.
  20. David Gilbert (October 16, 2015). "Artificial Intelligence Is Here To Help You Pick The Right Shoes". International Business Times.
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