Artificial intelligence startup Elemental Cognition Inc., founded by David Ferrucci, the former head of the team that created IBM Watson, has raised $60 million in new funding.

First reported by CNBC, the fundraise was disclosed in a filing today with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The filing states that Elemental Cognition is attempting to raise $65.7 million and so far has sold $59.95 million, with a remaining $5.75 million in equity remaining to be sold. The names of those who purchased the shares were not disclosed.

Founded in 2015, Elemental Cognition pitches its offering an “AI that thinks before it talks” with answers that are “provably correct and fully transparent” to “solve your toughest problems.” The company has as its vision that “We believe that AI’s potential for good is realized only if it can be understood and trusted by people.” There is a recurring theme through those statements and the rest of the company’s offering: Elemental Cognition is all about getting AI right, with the correct answers and results.

Elemental Cognition offers a hybrid AI platform with a natural language understanding that powers expert problem-solving intelligence in conversational and discovery applications. EC’s AI is claimed to transparently engage with people to understand, reason and explain in solving complex problems beyond traditional AI. The core of EC’s offering is to assist humans in understanding complex content, reasoning about it and finding and explaining answers.

The company’s advanced reasoning algorithms are transparent and provably correct, with “neuro-symbolic AI” that uses neural networks to find patterns and generate possibilities combined with mathematical logic to make sure it all makes sense.

EC’s first two products, Cognet and Cobra, provide AI-enhanced chatbot services for the financial services industry and travel planning. Cognet offers a dialog to understand and transform business requirements into intelligent, interactive problem-solving applications and Cora accelerates accurate, evidence-based research. 

Notable EC clients include the global airline alliance Oneworld Management Company Inc. and Penn State University. Oneworld is using EC’s technology for its Round the World trip planner.

Although the new investors’ names were not disclosed, according to PitchBook, previous investors include Breyer Capital LP, Bridgewater Associates LP, Stanford University and Palmisano LLC. Also listed under the about section on the company’s website in the “investors and advisors section” are senior staff and partners from Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC, Riverwood Capital LLC and Redpoint Ventures LP.

Founder Ferrucci worked at IBM from 1995 to 2012, building and leading a team of 30 AI researchers and software engineers in the development of Watson. He also served as the director of applied AI at Bridgewater Associates.

Image: Elemental Cognition