The flagship pioneer, the venture capital company and the Cambridge Startup factory founded 26 years ago, has largely focused on the promotion of life sciences, such as Moderna and Lila Sciences. But the advent of a more competent artificial intelligence takes FlagshipOne of the most eminent investors in the industry, in new directions.
Thursday, Flagship unveiled its latest startup called Extutive, with 20 million dollars in start -up funding and the emphasis on AI software to help companies design and market consumer products. It is a notable change for the flagship product, and this decision comes In the midst of a net slowdown in the local life science market This has seen the financing of startups – and jobs – dry.
“It’s funny that at the start, we do not even consider him as a consumer or a marketing company,” said Armen Mkrtchyan, a flagship partner who runs The company’s research effort of the company and will act as an extuctive managing director.
The concept of the startup was born from research combining generative artificial intelligence with AI according to what MKRTCHYAN calls “the intelligence of nature”.
AI generative software can create Thousands of products of product conceptions, which could be something, from a new medication to a new sofa. The additional development of Extuitive uses an AI model inspired by nature to aim for ideas through a modeled process on the “survival of the most fit” of evolution.
The extutive AI begins with detailed demographic data and purchase at around 100,000 real consumers. Then the software Use data to create artificial consumers and manages all of its past design and marketing ideas of these virtual buyers. “Just as nature would provide selective pressure and a species would constantly go, except that, thousands of years, we can do it in a few seconds, in minutes or in days,” said Mkrtchyan.
After having grown up in Armenia, Mkrtchyan came to MIT for higher education about 15 years ago, where he met for the first time Noubar Afeyan flagship founder. Afeyan encouraged MKRTCHYAN to start a business that develops autonomous drones for farmers. After a few years of work on the startup and stays in teaching and advice, MKRTCHYAN joined the flagship product in 2020.
Extutive begins with a team of 12 people, thanks to its dependence on AI software capacities. “We don’t need to be very tall,” said Mkrtchyan. “In this consumer product launch space, you see teams of 20 or 30 people entering hundreds of millions of dollars in income.”
With AI tools to help write code, for example, a software developer can do three work, he said. (Some studies have found a significant slowdown in hiring for entry level work in software and other roles vulnerable to AI.)
Venture capital investors have speculated Single Founder could start and manage a business worth $ 1 billion. Extutive could be useful for helping such a design and product market founder to build a person’s “unicorn”, said MKRTCHYAN.
“It’s very close,” said Mkrtchyan. “It’s very doable.”
Aaron Pressman can be reached aaron.pressman@globe.com. Follow him @ampressman.