AI21 Labs is an artificial intelligence startup whose mission is to reimagine the way we read and write by making the machine a thought partner to humans. Pulse 2.0 interviewed AI21 VP of Product Guy Einy to learn more.
Guy Einy’s Background
Photo Credit: Roei Shor
Einy comes from an economics and business academic background. “After a 10-year tenure in various engineering positions, I started to fully focus on product management starting in 2018 2008. I have since led product teams at Magisto, Selina, and Via, among others,” said Einy.
Formation Of AI21
How did the idea for AI21 come together? “In 2017, Yoav Shoham, one of the founders, came to the realization that the focus on deep learning (DL) was important, but it would not lead to reasoning in AI, which was something he aspired to achieve. That’s how the idea of combining DL with traditional AI came about. After meeting Ori Goshen, they decided to embark on this journey together. Shortly after Amnon Shashua joined the effort and the company was underway,” Einy shared.
Favorite Memory
What has been your favorite memory working for AI21 so far? “When we launched Wordtune to the world in 2020, we did not know how the market would accept an AI-powered writing assistant and how users would integrate it into their workflows. The overwhelming response we received surprised us all in the best way,” Einy reflected.
Challenges Faced
What are some of the challenges the company faced, and has the current macroeconomic climate affected the company? “AI in general and generative AI, in particular, has been experiencing a major growth spurt in the last 12 months. Both customers and investors are excited about the opportunity to take part in this revolution,” Einy acknowledged. “As a veteran executive in the industry, I have experienced several slowdowns as well as significant growth periods. As a company, we look ahead, knowing that every slowdown is followed by growth. These times present an opportunity to lay the foundation.”
Core Products
What are AI21’s core products and features? “AI21 has two main offerings. Our Platform, where we develop and offer our Large Language Models (LLMs) to customers who wish to integrate generative AI for various use cases in their offering to their customers or in their internal tools. We also offer them more specialized APIs for specific tasks such as summarizing and paraphrasing to use in their products,” Einy explained. “The other part of the company is the applications group. We developed and continue to develop Wordtune, which helps professionals and teams use AI to write and read better and faster and overcome writer’s block.”
Evolution Of AI21’s Technology
How has AI21’s technology evolved since launching? “Some of the achievements we can share are the launch of J1, our first Large Language model, back in 2020, which we have since improved and launched J2. The miracle architecture MRKL, which we introduced in 2021, is the base for combining LLMs, external knowledge sources for discrete reasoning. Scientifically, we have published several articles,” Einy pointed out.
Significant Milestones
What have been some of AI21’s most significant milestones?
“In 2020, we launched Wordtune, which quickly became the leading AI-first writing application. Since then, we had other significant milestones, such as launching our own model, Jurassic-1, with the Studio platform through which companies use it in their applications,” Einy highlighted. “This year, we announced two major partnerships with AWS, offering our models through SageMaker, AWS’s private cloud platform, as well as part of the bedrock service, a new service offering customers an accessible way to build generative AI-powered apps via pre-trained models.”
Customer Success Story
When I asked Einy about a customer success story, he replied: “Our customers vary in range from established players in their industry to up-and-rising startups. Latitude, a company in charge of a successful AI-based game, AI Dungeon, uses our models to serve the game to its players while cutting costs compared to competitors. Tweethunter, a small startup, based its product on our Jurassic model, scaled and sold the company within 12 months. We are especially proud of our customers, for which we are a core differentiator.”
Funding
So far, the company has raised $118 million and has been experiencing increased interest from investors.
Differentiation From The Competition
What differentiates AI21 from its competition? “Being one of the few in the world which trains language models from scratch, AI21 is even more unique since we also build end user-facing products on top of those models and market them to users and organizations,” Einy affirmed.
Future Company Goals
What are some of AI21’s future company goals? “We continue our journey to provide the world’s best-of-class LLMs and solutions on top of them, as well as keeping Wordtune at the cutting edge of AI writing tools, on its way to change reading and writing,” Einy concluded.
