Convergence—a startup creating personal AI agents for everyone—announced it has raised $12 million in pre-seed funding led by Balderton Capital. Salesforce Ventures and Shopify Ventures also participated in the round. This funding round will be used to develop novel models that power Proxy assistants, going beyond the current generation of AI and focusing on enabling continual learning and skill acquisition through memory.
Launched in April 2024 by machine learning engineers Marvin Purtorab, CEO and Andy Toulis, CTO, Convergence is redefining how we use software. Pairing users with personalised AI, And Proxy can learn tasks and workflows, freeing workers from their administrative burden and unleashing productivity. To put this into perspective, 62% of an average employee’s workday is lost to repetitive, mundane tasks, which Proxies are designed to excel at.
Proxy is also applicable beyond workplaces and can be tailored to consumers – providing everyone the opportunity to have their own personalised AI agent to support with tasks from booking holidays to ordering groceries. Convergence will launch Proxy in beta today, with a limited number of spots available.
Marvin and Andy met at Shopify while working on recommender systems and AI assistants before joining Cohere. And the AI platform for enterprises. Since founding Convergence only a few months ago, they have brought together a team of specialists from companies including Google DeepMind, Meta, and PolyAI. Plus, the team’s dedication and focus have enabled them to progress rapidly from concept to product launch in just three months, generating significant interest in this emerging company.
Unlike most agents that are designed for specific workflows, Proxy can work across a range of tasks and domains, acquiring skills like a human would through the use of long-term memory and continual learning. This is made possible by a new class of models called Large Meta Learning Models (LMLM), which are trained to acquire the skill of learning itself.
KEY QUOTES:
“Imagine an agent that keeps growing and learning whenever you teach them something new. Over time, the agent will take on mundane tasks allowing you to focus on higher-level tasks that are more impactful and also more enjoyable. The key to our approach is the ability for Proxy to learn and memorise tasks on the job, remembering them for the long term and being able to use its memories to extrapolate to new tasks – just as a person would. Our mission at Convergence is to build new, foundationally different technologies that are a clear pathway to useful intelligence. Balderton shares our vision deeply and we are looking forward to turning it into a reality with them.”
-Marvin Purtorab, co-founder and CEO of Convergence
“We’re building a future where people and Proxies are collaborating every day on the job. There’s unlimited potential in human-machine collaboration – together, we’ll solve important problems for humanity. We’re excited to be building this in London which has some of the best AI talent in the world.”
-Andy Toulis, co-founder and CTO of Convergence
“Few people have the experience and skill that Marvin and Andy have, which makes them well-placed to take on the complex technical challenge of a product like Proxy. In only a few short months, they have built a stellar team and are ready to ship a remarkable product that could transform how we live and work. I look forward to being a part of their growth journey.”
-James Wise, Partner at Balderton Capital
