A staggering 95% of generative AI pilots at corporations are failing, in keeping with a latest report revealed by MIT’s NANDA initiative. However reasonably than giving up on the know-how altogether, essentially the most superior organizations are experimenting with agentic AI techniques that may be taught and be supervised.
That’s the place Maisa AI is available in. The year-old startup has constructed its whole strategy across the premise that enterprise automation requires accountable AI brokers, not opaque black bins. With a brand new, $25 million seed spherical led by European VC agency Creandum, it has now launched Maisa Studio, a model-agnostic self-serve platform that helps customers deploy digital employees that may be skilled with pure language.
Whereas that may sound acquainted — paying homage to so-called vibe coding platforms like Cursor and the Creandum-backed Lovable — Maisa argues that its strategy is essentially totally different. “As an alternative of utilizing AI to construct the responses, we use AI to construct the method that must be executed to get to the response — what we name ‘chain-of-work,” Maisa CEO David Villalón informed TechCrunch.
The principal architect behind this course of is Maisa’s co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer, Manuel Romero, who had beforehand labored with Villalón at Spanish AI startup Clibrain. In 2024, the duo teamed as much as construct an answer to hallucinations after seeing firsthand that “you could possibly not depend on AI,” Villalón mentioned.
The pair isn’t skeptical about AI, however they suppose it received’t be possible for people to assessment “three months of labor achieved in 5 minutes.” To deal with this, Maisa employs a system referred to as HALP, standing for Human-Augmented LLM Processing. This tradition technique works like college students on the blackboard — it asks customers about their wants whereas the digital employees define every step they’ll observe.
The startup additionally developed the Data Processing Unit (KPU), a deterministic system designed to restrict hallucinations. Whereas Maisa began out from this technical problem reasonably than a use case, it quickly discovered that its guess on trustworthiness and accountability resonated with corporations hoping to use AI to vital duties. As an illustration, purchasers that at the moment use Maisa in manufacturing embody a big financial institution, in addition to corporations within the automotive manufacturing and power sectors.
By serving these enterprise purchasers, Maisa hopes to place itself as a extra superior type of robotic course of automation (RPA) that unlocks productiveness positive aspects with out requiring corporations to depend on inflexible predefined guidelines or intensive guide programming. To satisfy their wants, the startup additionally presents them both deployment in its safe cloud or by way of on-premise deployment.
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This enterprise-first strategy means Maisa’s buyer base remains to be very small in comparison with the thousands and thousands flocking to freemium vibe-coding platforms. However as these platforms at the moment are exploring find out how to win enterprise prospects, Maisa is transferring in the wrong way with Maisa Studio, which is designed to develop its buyer funnel and ease adoption.
The startup additionally plans to develop with current prospects which have operations in a number of international locations. With twin headquarters in Valencia and San Francisco, Maisa itself already has a foothold within the U.S., as mirrored in its cap desk; its $5 million pre-seed round final December was led by the San Francisco-based enterprise corporations NFX and Village International.
As well as, TechCrunch realized completely that U.S. agency Forgepoint Capital Worldwide participated on this new spherical through its European joint venture with Spanish financial institution Banco Santander, highlighting its enchantment for regulated sectors.
Specializing in advanced use circumstances demanding accountability from non-technical customers could possibly be a differentiator for Maisa, whose opponents embody CrewAI and lots of different AI-powered, business-focused workflow automation merchandise. In a LinkedIn put up, Villalón highlighted this “AI framework gold rush,” warning that the “fast begin” turns into a protracted nightmare if you want reliability, auditability, or the power to repair what went improper.”
Doubling down on its aim to assist AI scale, Maisa plans to make use of its funding to develop from 35 to as many as 65 folks by the primary quarter of 2026 to be able to meet demand. Beginning within the final quarter of this 12 months, the startup anticipates fast progress because it begins serving its ready listing. “We’re going to present the market that there’s a firm that’s delivering what has been promised, and that it’s working,” Villalón mentioned.
