DevAI Solutions Inc., an artificial intelligence startup founded by former Cisco Systems Inc. executives, today announced that it has raised $6 million in funding.

The oversubscribed seed round was led by Emergence Capital. The venture capital firm has previously backed major enterprise tech firms such as Box Inc. and Salesforce Inc. DevAI says that the investment also included the participation of Pear VC, Base10 and Benchstrength.

Palo Alto, California-based DevAI is led by Chief Executive Susie Wee. She was previously the senior vice president and chief technology officer of Cisco’s DevNet developer platform. The platform provides access to application programming interfaces and other technical resources that customers can use to write software for Cisco products.

Wee co-founded DevAI with CTO Edwin Zhang. He was previously director of software development and user experience for Cisco’s DevNet.

DevAI offers a software platform called the Network Intelligence Engine that promises to reduce manual work for information technology teams. It does so using agentic AI, AI programs designed to perform tasks with a high degree of autonomy. DevAI claims the platform can reduce the time it takes to resolve some IT tickets by by 40% to 70%.

The company’s first agent, Neo, is designed to automate incident response, cybersecurity and regulatory compliance tasks. It also promises to speed up IT planning. That’s the preparatory work administrators carry out before expanding an IT environment or changing existing components.

DevAI says its AI agents generate technical advice based on customers’ internal data. The platform can analyze information from a company’s IT management tools, as well as take into account industry best practices.

Job postings on DevAI’s website indicate that its agents are powered by large language models. The postings hints that the company is using RAG, or retrieval-augmented generation, to help those LLMs analyze data. RAG is a machine learning technique that makes it possible to expand an LLM’s knowledge base without retraining it, which lowers costs.

“IT professionals are the unsung heroes of modern enterprises, working around the clock to ensure IT systems stay online and networks are secure and performing their best,” Wee said. “Our network AI agents give them the insights they need to proactively address issues and eliminate inefficiencies so they can focus on business priorities and innovation.”

Zeus Kerravala, principal analyst at ZK Research, told SiliconANGLE that almost all AI agent providers have been focused on business users such as salespeople, contact center agents and marketing individuals, with very little focus on IT professionals.

“My research shows, despite advancements in infrastructure, managing IT has not improved much,” he noted. “Seventy-one percent of IT resources are used to maintain the status quo, leaving very little to dedicate to strategic initiatives. Some IT vendors have built agentic AI into their products, and while these can be useful, they operate in silos. As an IT pro, I may have a separate agent for Wi-Fi, security, the campus network and wide-area network.”

DevAI, he said, “looks to simplify IT management by creating a single agentic AI agent that operates cross-platform. This is badly needed today as the business reliance has never been higher. DevAI’s solution enables IT pros to work smarter and faster.”

The company is currently testing its platform with several enterprises as part of an effort to refine its feature set. It will use the proceeds from its seed round to support product development initiatives and broaden its user base.

Photo: Unsplash