AUI Raises $20 Million and Raises Questions About the Transformer Era

New York–based Augmented Intelligence Inc. (AUI) has raised $20 million in a bridge SAFE round at a $750 million valuation cap, bringing its total funding to nearly $60 million. The round was completed in under a week and included eGateway Ventures, New Era Capital Partners, existing shareholders, and other strategic investors.

Founded in 2017 by Ohad Elhelo and Ori Cohen, AUI aims to move beyond the transformer-based large language models that dominate today’s AI landscape. The funding follows a $10 million round in September 2024 at a $350 million valuation, coinciding with AUI’s partnership with Google. “We realize that you can combine the brilliance of LLMs in linguistic capabilities with the guarantees of symbolic AI,” said Elhelo, AUI’s co-founder and CEO

Early investors include Vertex Pharmaceuticals founder Joshua Boger, UKG Chairman Aron Ain, and former IBM President Jim Whitehurst. The company says this latest bridge round paves the way for a larger raise in progress.

Apollo-1 and the Business of Determinism

At the center of AUI’s expansion is Apollo-1, its flagship foundation model for task-oriented dialog designed for enterprise use. Unlike general-purpose systems such as ChatGPT or Gemini, Apollo-1 focuses on structured, rule-based interactions where precision and compliance are critical.