SymbyAI, a cloud-based platform leveraging artificial intelligence to optimize scientific research, has secured $2.1 million in seed funding from investors including Drive Capital and CharacterVC. 

Founded in the previous year by Ashia Livaudais and Michael House, SymbyAI offers researchers a unified workspace to access and manage papers, code, data, and experiences. The platform enables progress tracking and features an AI-driven tool for peer review and replication support. 

Notably, SymbyAI utilizes a proprietary AI solution, ensuring that users’ confidential information remains secure and is not shared with external companies like OpenAI or Anthropic. As a result, researchers maintain ownership of their intellectual property, which is not utilized to train SymbyAI’s underlying models, according to Livaudais in an interview with TechCrunch. 

Livaudais’ motivation for establishing the company stemmed from her personal experience with the inefficiencies of the traditional scientific review and creation process. 

“SymbyAI was created as a solution to the problems I faced daily, and it became apparent that my colleagues in the research community were seeking solutions to the same challenges,” Livaudais explained. “As we successfully shortened critical research processes from months to hours, demand for a productized version emerged from nearly every conversation I had with potential users.” 

SymbyAI collaborates with academic publishers, research institutions, and universities. Livaudais met her investors through participation in the gBeta program, part of gener8tor, which led to connections with initial investors, including Antler, who invested in the company’s pre-seed round. 

With the newly acquired seed capital, SymbyAI plans to further develop its operations and fulfill initial partnership commitments.