Init.ai

Init.ai, founded in 2015 by Keith Brisson, Will Dawoodi, Kyle DeTella, and Trevor McNaughton, was a New York-based startup that developed a platform for building conversational applications. The company secured an undisclosed amount of funding from investors including Boldstart Ventures, Danmar Capital, and Techstars. The core of Init.ai's offering was a developer platform that utilized artificial intelligence and natural language processing, enabling businesses to create and deploy platform-agnostic conversational apps without requiring a download.

The platform was designed to assist customer representatives by parsing and analyzing chat-based interactions to provide better insights and automate responses. It employed machine learning models that were trained rather than explicitly programmed, improving their performance as they were exposed to more conversational data. The system would listen to conversations in real-time, suggest automated responses, and analyze the dialogue to inform future customer relations strategies.

In October 2017, Apple executed an "acqui-hire" of the Init.ai team, bringing the small, six-person startup on board to work on its virtual assistant, Siri. The deal was reportedly focused on acquiring the team's talent and expertise in natural language processing and machine learning, rather than its intellectual property. This move was interpreted as part of Apple's broader strategy to enhance Siri's capabilities and to support the then-new Business Chat feature in iOS 11, which allowed businesses to communicate directly with customers via iMessage. Following the acquisition, Init.ai discontinued its service to integrate with Apple. Keywords: Init.ai, Apple acquisition, conversational AI, chatbot platform, natural language processing, machine learning, customer service automation, Siri development, Keith Brisson, Will Dawoodi, Kyle DeTella, Trevor McNaughton, AI startup, acqui-hire, Business Chat, developer platform, message-based applications, customer interaction analysis, automated responses, real-time conversation analysis