SAN FRANCISCO - June 13, 2024 at 11 a.m. ET - Zeta Labs, an AI research and product company developing autonomous agents capable of efficiently performing complex and multi-step tasks, today announced the raise of its $2.9 million pre-seed round and the debut of its large language model (LLM)-based proprietary autonomous AI agent, JACE. The round was led by Daniel Gross, former head of AI at Y Combinator, and Nat Friedman, former Github CEO, with participation from Earlybird VC and Kaya VC as well as AI Grant, Shawn (swyx) Wang, Bartek Pucek and Mati Staniszewski, founder of ElevenLabs. Zeta Labs will use the funding to expand its engineering team, host training models, and enhance JACE’s overall infrastructure, improving its speed and reliability.
A groundbreaking digital assistant, JACE represents the future of AI agents, going beyond traditional uses of current AI chatbots like ChatGPT and their text-generation focus. Instead, JACE focuses on taking action in the digital world. It differs from existing AI-powered chatbots due to its complex cognitive architecture, which enables it to complete high-difficulty tasks. Created by Zeta Labs, JACE can control and perform actions in the browser similarly to a human user, excelling in managing complex tasks that involve web automation, interaction and direct communication. This is due to the development and training of Zeta Labs’ proprietary web-interaction model, AWA-1 (Autonomous Web Agent-1), which enables JACE to reliably execute tasks over long periods of time, effectively handling the challenges and inconsistencies commonly found in web interfaces.
“At Zeta Labs, we aim to enable AI models to interact with the digital world around them. The development of our AWA-1 model allows JACE the ability to control a browser, essentially giving the AI assistant the digital equivalent of arms and legs,” said Peter Albert, co-founder of Zeta Labs. “You can’t ask any current chatbot on the market to book a trip, pay an invoice or set up a job post. With JACE, you can.”
By learning through extensive simulated interactions and utilizing synthetic data for rapid self-improvement, JACE developed the ability to navigate and utilize digital tools effectively. It is able to provide tangible assistance in a wide array of tasks from simple to-dos like making a restaurant reservation to more complex projects like setting up a recruitment pipeline or starting a business. The end result is a modern AI agent capable of assisting in a broad spectrum of tasks previously beyond the scope of chat-optimized AI models. By teaching JACE to control a browser, Zeta Labs created a system capable of emulating a substantial portion of day-to-day office work. To prove JACE’s efficacy and ability to go beyond the traditional AI-assistant role, the Zeta Labs team tested the autonomous agent by asking it to create a company on its own. Starting with a simple prompt, JACE led the user through creating a business plan, registered the business - a math tutoring company - found the first client and made its first revenue, all within two weeks. In the latest internal benchmark test conducted by Zeta Labs, which focused on the most common web-based tasks, like navigating the ordering process for a pizza delivery or finding two flats in London that meet specific criteria from the past week’s listings, JACE showed impressive performance. JACE performed the best when using Zeta Labs’ AWA-1 model, delivering an 89% task completion success rate, compared to when it used GPT-4o (68% success rate) and an open-source web agent using GPT-4o (25% success rate).
“In its current form, I see JACE as a meta-aggregator for web interfaces. Why learn to navigate all the different user interfaces when you can have a universal UI for everything?” said Fryderyk Wiatrowski, co-founder of Zeta Labs. “With JACE, you simply say what you need, and if you forget, it will ask you all the necessary questions up front. Imagine a universal service desk with a consultant who knows you personally and never needs to sleep. JACE will be that for you, just sitting there, ready to serve you at all times.“
Zeta Labs was co-founded by Fryderyk Wiatrowski and Peter Albert in August 2023. Albert, who launched his first e-commerce business eight years ago, noticed the extensive amount of office time spent on repetitive mundane tasks as he looked to fill operational roles. He wanted to create an environment where his team could focus on the interesting work that really mattered, while simultaneously being more efficient and effective. This vision laid the foundation for Zeta Labs and, after connecting with Wiatrowski during their time at Meta, where Albert was part of the core team behind Llama 2, the two decided to join forces.
"Web browsing was invented 34 years ago and forever changed the global economy, yet AI models don't understand how to use it,” said Daniel Gross, Zeta Labs investor and entrepreneur known for founding Cue and Pioneer. “The next paradigm shift in AI is unlocking that behavior, and Zeta Labs is poised to make that happen. I am pleased to be an investor in this grand mission!"
To learn more about Zeta Labs and sign up for JACE’s waitlist, visit https://www.zetalabs.ai/.
About Zeta Labs
Founded in 2023 by Fryderyk Wiatrowski and Peter Albert, Zeta Labs is an AI research and product lab dedicated to the art of possibility and the pursuit of significance. Their mission is to develop technologies that clear the path for humanity to engage with what truly matters. They are the creators of JACE, a proprietary AI agent based on large language models (LLMs) that is able to control and perform actions in the browser, like a human user would, and excels in managing interactive and complex tasks that require web interaction, automation, and direct communication functionalities. Engineered to navigate and utilize digital tools, JACE offers tangible assistance in a wide array of tasks, from routine activities like making a restaurant reservation to complex projects such as managing recruitment pipelines or launching businesses. JACE’s capability to complete cognitively-complex, multi-step tasks represents a significant advancement in AI capabilities. In 2024, the Zeta Labs team utilized this autonomous AI agent to establish the world’s first AI-created company.
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