Ex-Google, Coursera employees start Lutra AI to make AI workflows easier to build

▤ Summary

While working at Coursera and later Google over the past decade, there were many times when Jiquan Ngiam would see an engineering function that could be automated to support non-developers. However, there were never enough resources to do that.Ngiam got together with five friends earlier this year, including Vijay Vasudevan, who had worked with him at Google, to look at the models artificial intelligence came up with for the cloud, for example, to do reasoning, planning and coding.It made me think about the ability of these models to generate code and reasoning, then figure out the environment about making it more useful for non-engineers, Ngiam told TechCrunch. There was this question about can these models now code in a way that interconnects all the software we use to then do very useful things for us reliably and securely.They set out to build specialized assistants that help you with all kinds of tasks. The young startup, started in April, creates AI workflows from natural language so no technical experience is needed. When I think long-term, all of these technologies are well embedded into companies today, so this is the moment to provide tools that integrate across all the software uses, thereby empowering your business to operate even more effectively.

▦ Linked Companies

Coursera, Inc.

$500M to $1B