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Again in June 2024 — an eternity within the fast-moving generative AI sector — a startup based by Microsoft, Google, and Baidu alumni referred to as MainFunc launched its first product, Genspark, an AI search engine.
Since then, the collision of generative AI, which might create new content material on demand, and search, which historically retrieves it, has solely intensified throughout the {industry}. Google lately added Search grounding to its Gemini AI Studio and naturally, OpenAI simply built-in its highly effective realtime internet SearchGPT straight into its signature chatbot product ChatGPT.
However now MainFunc — powered by a $60 million seed spherical led by Singapore-based Lanchi Ventures and supported by international angel traders — is hitting again, teaming up with AI mannequin maker Anthropic to launch “Distill Web” for Genspark, a software designed to make monetary reviews extra comprehensible and accessible.
The software launched earlier this week and powers a variety of options on Genspark’s AI search engine, together with Genspark Finance.
Total, very merely, Distill Net offers customers the power to search for 300,000-and-counting public firms and generate polished, readable, partaking monetary reviews on their earnings — full with colourful graphics and charts — turning this advanced monetary knowledge into visible, easy-to-use codecs for a large viewers.
Whether or not you need to see how Apple is doing after the launch of the brand new iPhone lineup, or how Google is weathering the AI wars, Distill Net can generate reviews that exhibit these and plenty of different firms’ monetary reviews, robotically highlighting fascinating outliers and traits. It’s like Yahoo or Google Finance on steroids.
“We think that in the AI era, search will become an underlying tool for agents,” mentioned Eric Jing, co-founder and CEO of MainFunc, and the previous Chief Product Supervisor of Search & Company VP at Baidu. “People won’t come to search just for a query or a list of links—they’ll come to complete tasks. By combining different tools, agents can do much more than search alone.”
With greater than 1 million month-to-month customers gained in simply 4 months by means of word-of-mouth, Genspark.ai is already establishing itself as a big participant in AI-powered knowledge accessibility. The brand new replace underscores its broader imaginative and prescient to redefine how customers work together with knowledge.
Making monetary info extra accessible to these outdoors finance
“Our target audience isn’t financial professionals—it’s everyday users who want to understand financial data from public companies.” Jing advised VentureBeat. “Eventually, we hope to help people with private company data, too.”
Distill Net’s flagship function, Company Earnings Visible Experiences, affords a brand new method to view monetary info.
These AI-powered visualizations flip intricate firm earnings into flowing diagrams, highlighting income streams, prices, and revenue margins. The platform at the moment supplies over 300,000 visible reviews, with extra added month-to-month.
To reinforce accessibility additional, Genspark additionally affords free Monetary Knowledge Packs. These downloadable PDFs present visible analyses of revenue statements from over 100 main firms, enabling customers to trace income, bills, and earnings with ease.
Partnering for product integration
MainFunc claims Genspark is superior to different AI search efforts due to its efforts on prime quality, correct knowledge — so it isn’t aiming to have any sort of the scandals noticed with Google’s AI Overviews offering hallucinated and inaccurate info, for instance.
“What sets us apart from others is that we don’t just use AI to provide tools—we create data platforms,” Jing mentioned. “Our approach combines AI-generated insights with traditional coding techniques to ensure the accuracy and trustworthiness of financial data.”
As a part of that concentrate on accuracy, MainFunc evaluated which of the main giant language fashions (LLMs) could be greatest suited to comb by means of monetary knowledge and generate correct charts and graphs, and found it was Anthropic’s Claude household — so the 2 partnered on this effort.
“We found that Claude, Anthropic’s model, is particularly good at handling numbers and complex calculations compared to others like OpenAI,” Jing defined. “That’s why we partnered with them for financial data analysis.”
To additional construct belief, Genspark implements rigorous validation measures. “One major barrier to building trust in AI is hallucination. To address this, we double-check numbers using both AI and traditional formula-based techniques. It’s critical that the data adds up and is reliable.”
Ask and ye shall obtain
Distill Net affords extra than simply static reviews by means of Genspark. The All-in-One Firm Dashboard consolidates key monetary metrics for over 70,000 firms, offering a complete view of efficiency in a single place.
For customers in search of deeper insights, the AI-powered Monetary Copilot solutions custom-made questions, similar to comparisons with rivals or figuring out progress drivers.
This user-first method displays MainFunc broader mission.
“Normal users often don’t know what questions to ask when looking at financial data,” Jing mentioned. “That’s why we present pre-generated, visually rich reports. Users can browse these and ask follow-up questions if needed, removing the initial barrier of crafting queries.”
Extra differentiated options coming
Wanting forward, MainFunc plans to proceed increasing its choices and introducing new options to Genspark search.
Jing advised VentureBeat: “We’re launching a new data search agent soon. It will autonomously collect accurate data from various sources, even when users are offline, delivering results in minutes that would normally take hours or days.”
The corporate’s broader imaginative and prescient goes past instruments to give attention to remodeling knowledge accessibility. “We believe high-quality data is more valuable than the models themselves. Our mission is to build a platform that transforms the way people access and understand data, particularly for non-expert users,” Jing says.