To stay competitive, some companies are scrambling to adopt AI, but they are sometimes unsure of the best way to integrate AI into their business. Illiya Valchanvov, co-founder and CEO of Team-GPT, thinks he has an answer to their worries.
In 2023, Valchanvov and Ilko Kacharvo, Yavor Belakov, Katya Vaptsarova, and Maria Valchanova launched Team-GPT as a software suite of AI tools (like Claude and ChatGPT) that companies can integrate into their workplace systems. Valchanvov said that offering a suite makes it easier for companies to manage these tools; otherwise, they would have to have a separate subscription for each feature. He also said there is a privacy component.
“If you use your own models, you can deploy this on-premises and never share your data with OpenAI or Anthropic,” he told TechCrunch, So that means, a company can use Team-GPT to deploy AWS servers, for example, with no data retention.
Team-GPT also offers online courses on how to use certain AI tools and has enterprise features such as platform administration and group mapping.
Valchanvov says Salesforce and John Hopkins are already using Team-GPT, along with 45,000 clients. On Tuesday, the company announced a $4.5 million seed round led by True Ventures, with participation from Pact and angel investors, including ex-OpenAI employees, Valchanvov said.
Still, as a founder based in Bulgaria, he said it was still quite hard for his company to fundraise. “As we are Silicon Valley outsiders, who wanted to raise in Silicon Valley,” he said. He traveled to London to meet with European VCs and then spent two months in San Francisco building relationships to meet some investors. “We met 85 VCs,” he said.
It took them about three months total to raise. He counts OpenAI, Claude, Dust, and Langdock as competitors. He says what makes Team-GPT different is that it is seeking to serve mid-to-large-size companies that are interested in some customization and are interested in adopting technology with their own data.
Team-GPT will use the fresh capital to expand its team and increase product delivery.
