A staggering 95% of generative AI pilots at firms are failing, in accordance with a latest report printed by MIT’s NANDA initiative. However somewhat than giving up on the expertise altogether, probably the most superior organizations are experimenting with agentic AI techniques that may study 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 educated with pure language.
Whereas which may sound acquainted — paying homage to so-called vibe coding platforms like Cursor and the Creandum-backed Lovable — Maisa argues that its strategy is basically totally different. “As a substitute 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 iinfoai.
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 may not depend on AI,” Villalón stated.
The pair isn’t skeptical about AI, however they assume it received’t be possible for people to assessment “three months of labor completed in 5 minutes.” To deal with this, Maisa employs a system known as HALP, standing for Human-Augmented LLM Processing. This practice methodology works like college students on the blackboard — it asks customers about their wants whereas the digital employees define every step they may 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 somewhat than a use case, it quickly discovered that its guess on trustworthiness and accountability resonated with firms hoping to use AI to essential duties. As an illustration, purchasers that at present use Maisa in manufacturing embrace a big financial institution, in addition to firms within the automobile 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 good points with out requiring firms to depend on inflexible predefined guidelines or in depth handbook programming. To satisfy their wants, the startup additionally provides 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 tens of millions flocking to freemium vibe-coding platforms. However as these platforms at the moment are exploring methods to win enterprise clients, 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 increase with current clients which have operations in a number of nations. 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 spherical final December was led by the San Francisco-based enterprise corporations NFX and Village International.
As well as, iinfoai discovered solely that U.S. agency Forgepoint Capital Worldwide participated on this new spherical by way of its European three way partnership with Spanish financial institution Banco Santander, highlighting its enchantment for regulated sectors.
Specializing in complicated use circumstances demanding accountability from non-technical customers may very well be a differentiator for Maisa, whose rivals embrace CrewAI and plenty 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 an extended nightmare if you want reliability, auditability, or the flexibility to repair what went incorrect.”
Doubling down on its objective to assist AI scale, Maisa plans to make use of its funding to develop from 35 to as many as 65 individuals by the primary quarter of 2026 to be able to meet demand. Beginning within the final quarter of this 12 months, the startup anticipates speedy development 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 stated.
