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Agentsare the next braggy thing in AI . Some define these “ agents ” differently from others , but the general idea is , they ’re AI - powered tools that can perform tasks autonomously .
The agent hype has reached a fever pitch , but one startup was relatively former to the game : LlamaIndex . Foundedby former Uber enquiry scientist Jerry Liu and Simon Suo in 2023 , LlamaIndex allows developers to build usance federal agent over unstructured data .
“ LlamaIndex come out as a toy undefended source project in November 2022 , ” Liu told TechCrunch . “ I became deeply concerned in understanding how magnanimous language models ( LLMs ) could be used on top of proprietary data outside their training stage set , and built an initial set of tools enabling developer to index finger and include datum in their LLM apps . ”
Using LlamaIndex ’s open source software , which has racked up million of downloads on GitHub , developers can create custom agent that can pull up information , generate write up and insights , and take specific activeness . LlamaIndex provides datum connective and utilities like LlamaParse , which transforms amorphous data point into a structured format that can be used for particular AI applications .
While there are other assailable source frameworks to build AI broker out there , LlamaIndex is differentiate by its suite of data ingestion , data point direction , and datum indexing and recovery solutions , Liu said . It can join information from filing cabinet like PDFs and PowerPoint presentation , as well as apps such as Notion and Slack , with an agent .
Salesforce , KPMG , and Carlyle are among the companies using LlamaIndex today , Liu said .
“ All of these competing solutions solve specific problem at different share of the reproductive AI stack , but then it ’s the developer ’s obligation to patch together fragmented solutions to create a working agent , ” Liu tot . “ This is a important pain in the ass point that hampers shipping agents to output . LlamaIndex made it our mission to deliver the most secure , exact , and wanton - to - economic consumption platform for building destruction - to - end knowledge agents . ”
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LlamaIndex ’s next chapter is an enterprisingness military service built on top of the company ’s open source offerings . send for LlamaCloud , it lets customer make cloud - host agent that can work with and pull strings unstructured data point in a variety of formats .
LlamaCloud can be deployed via a software system - as - a - service installation or in a practical private cloud , and comes with features include role - base access control and unmarried sign - on , Liu said .
In part to facilitate fund LlamaCloud ’s development , LlamaIndex of late raise $ 19 million in a Series A funding round that was lead by Norwest Venture Partners , and saw participation from Greylock as well . The raw cash brings LlamaIndex ’s entire funding raised to $ 27.5 million , and Liu say that it ’ll be used for expanding LlamaIndex ’s 20 - person team and product exploitation .
“ We have sufficient rail to take us through initial commercial-grade expanding upon of our chopine , ” Liu said . “ We ’re bet on a futurity where developer play a large office in render GenAI applications within the endeavour . ”
