Zeta Labs secures $2.9 million in pre-seed funding to advance its innovative AI agent, JACE, capable of autonomously handling complex and multi-step tasks through browser-based actions, attracting interest from prominent AI investors and setting new benchmarks in digital assistants.
Zeta Labs Secures $2.9M in Pre-Seed Funding for AI Agent Capable of Complex Task Completion
SAN FRANCISCO, CA – Zeta Labs, an artificial intelligence (AI) research and product company, has successfully raised $2.9 million in a pre-seed funding round to develop its groundbreaking AI agent, JACE. This innovative agent is designed to handle cognitively complex and multi-step tasks by performing browser-based actions, positioning itself as a potential game-changer in the world of AI assistants.
The funding round saw significant interest from prominent AI investors, including Daniel Gross, former head of AI at Y Combinator, and Nat Friedman, former CEO of GitHub. Other contributors were Earlybird VC, Kaya VC, AI Grant, Shawn (swyx) Wang, Bartek Pucek, and Mati Staniszewski, founder of ElevenLabs. The raised funds will be channelled towards expanding Zeta Labs’ engineering team, boosting infrastructure for training models, and enhancing JACE’s speed and reliability.
A New Kind of Digital Assistant
Unlike existing AI chatbots, such as ChatGPT, which primarily focus on text generation, JACE is engineered for digital action. Its complex cognitive architecture enables it to manage high-difficulty tasks by controlling a browser in a manner akin to a human user. This ability to interact autonomously with web interfaces through its proprietary web-interaction model, AWA-1, allows JACE to perform tasks requiring extensive web navigation and interaction.
“At Zeta Labs, we aim to enable AI models to interact with the digital world around them. The development of our AWA-1 model allows JACE the ability to control a browser, essentially giving the AI assistant the digital equivalent of arms and legs,” said Peter Albert, co-founder of Zeta Labs. “Current chatbots can’t book trips, pay invoices, or set up job posts. With JACE, you can.”
Proven Capabilities
JACE’s potential was demonstrated when it was tasked with creating a company from scratch. Within two weeks, the AI agent developed a business plan, registered the company, found its first client, and generated initial revenue, showcasing its ability to handle complex operations autonomously.
Moreover, internal benchmarks revealed that JACE excelled at common web-based tasks. It achieved an 89% completion success rate using Zeta Labs’ AWA-1 model, in contrast to GPT-4o’s 68% success rate and an open-source web agent’s 25% success rate.
“In its current form, I see JACE as a meta-aggregator for web interfaces. Why learn to navigate all the different user interfaces when you can have a universal UI for everything?” said Fryderyk Wiatrowski, co-founder of Zeta Labs. “With JACE, you simply say what you need, and if you forget, it will ask the necessary questions. Imagine a universal service desk that knows you personally and never needs to sleep. JACE will be that for you, ready to serve at all times.”
Founders’ Vision and Future Prospects
Fryderyk Wiatrowski and Peter Albert founded Zeta Labs in August 2023, driven by a vision to reduce the time spent on repetitive tasks in office settings. Albert, who previously worked on the Llama 2 team at Meta, teamed up with Wiatrowski to leverage their expertise in AI and automation to create JACE.
“Web browsing was invented 34 years ago and forever changed the global economy, yet AI models don’t understand how to use it,” said Daniel Gross, investor and entrepreneur. “The next paradigm shift in AI is unlocking that behaviour, and Zeta Labs is poised to make that happen. I am pleased to be an investor in this grand mission!”
Zeta Labs aims to redefine the role of AI in digital interactions, potentially transforming it into a digital assistant capable of undertaking a variety of tasks, from routine activities like making a reservation to complex projects like managing recruitment pipelines.
As they push forward with this ambitious venture, Zeta Labs is set to further develop and refine JACE, aiming to offer a versatile AI tool across various industries.
