Artificial intelligence service-as-a-software startup Enso Technologies Ltd. today announced the launch of what it claims is the first ecosystem of “guided AI agents” for small and medium-sized businesses.

The company’s launch came as it closed on a $6 million seed funding round led by NFX Ventures. Dark Mode Ventures and a number of angel investors, including Yassi Matias, head of AI at Google Research, and Shmil Levy, an ex-partner at Sequoia Capital, participated in the round, too.

There are more than 1,000 AI agents available in Enso’s portfolio of AI services, and each one has been fine-tuned on domain-specific best practices to handle common tasks in over 70 industries, such as accounting, research, data entry, digital marketing, recruitment and more, the company says.

AI agents are generative AI models, similar to the GPT-4 model that powers OpenAI’s ChatGPT, yet they’re customized to perform one specific task. They have a lot of potential in terms of work automation, yet until now they have only really been deployed by larger organizations, Enso says.

The company says SMBs currently employ around half of the American workforce, and represent 43.5% of the U.S. gross domestic product. Yet despite this, many SMBs continue to suffer growing pains, Enso says. It cites recent research by Microsoft Corp. revealing that though 59% of SMB owners want to generate new ideas for growth, they’re unable to do so due to being bogged down in mundane, daily tasks such as customer communications, accounting, administrative chores such as data entry and scheduling, planning and more.

Enso wants to help these SMBs by providing cost-effective access to the most advanced AI models, so they can automate many of these tasks and free their employees to work on more inventive projects. To that end, it has created a comprehensive catalog of AI service agents designed to perform a staggering array of common business tasks, available via monthly subscriptions.

Enso Chief Executive Mickey Haslavsky said many SMBs are constantly in “survival mode,” lacking the resources and expertise possessed by their larger competitors. As a result, it becomes difficult for them to grow and match those rivals. With the rise of AI, he believes, they’re falling even further behind.

“AI has fast become readily available to these larger companies, but not to small businesses,” Haslavsky explained. “We created Enso by making AI accessible to companies that serve traditional industries so they can compete on an equal footing with larger corporations, instead of spending money on bank-breaking agency services.”

A quick glance at Enso’s homepage reveals the comprehensive nature of its Guided AI Agent offerings, which are designed to go beyond the capabilities of traditional, multipurpose large language models such as GPT-4. The company says that conventional AI agents powered by such models frequently make mistakes, limiting the ability of smaller companies to go truly autonomous.

Its Guided AI Agents span numerous categories. For instance, there’s an AI-powered “Google Ranker” agent that handles a company’s search engine optimization efforts, priced at $79 per month. It also offers dedicated agents for managing Instagram, Facebook and TikTok accounts, priced at $59 per month, as well as agents for guest posting on blogs, handling public relations, recruiting staff, posting Quora responses and email sales tasks.

Besides its own library of AI agents, Enso’s marketplace also plans to accept submissions from third-party developers. In the coming weeks, it will launch a “Guided AI Agent Builder” for developers that want to create and market AI agent services on its platform.

NFX Ventures Partner Gigi Levy-Weiss said that the AI revolution has so far largely bypassed smaller businesses, even though these organizations represent the backbone of the U.S. economy. He said that larger organizations are racing ahead in AI, while SMBs continue to struggle to perform basic admin tasks.

“Enso is one of the first companies recognizing this need and putting enterprise-grade AI in the hands of emerging companies, democratizing AI by providing access and scalability,” he said.

Featured image: SiliconANGLE/Microsoft Designer