Forethought Secures $9M Series A Funding After TechCrunch Disrupt Win

The article "Forethought scores $9M Series A in wake of Battlefield win" by Ron Miller, published on December 4, 2018, details the significant funding round secured by Forethought, an AI startup focused on revolutionizing enterprise search. Following their victory at the TechCrunch Disrupt Battlefield competition in September 2018, Forethought announced a $9 million Series A investment. This funding round was led by NEA, with participation from K9 Ventures, Village Global, and several prominent angel investors, including Mathilde Collin (Front CEO), Vlad Tenev (Robinhood CEO), and Alexa von Tobel (Learnvest CEO).

Forethought's core innovation lies in its departure from traditional keyword-based enterprise search. Instead, it leverages artificial intelligence and natural language processing (NLP) to understand user queries, including synonyms and natural language questions, to retrieve accurate information from vast document repositories. CEO and co-founder Deon Nicholas highlighted the increased interest and momentum gained after their Disrupt win, stating that the company has seen a significant uptick in customer interest.

The company had been in stealth for a year prior to its public launch at TechCrunch Disrupt. Since then, the three co-founders have expanded their team to nine employees and plan to hire more, particularly in machine learning and product/UX design.

Initially, Forethought's solutions were embeddable within platforms like Salesforce and Zendesk, but the company aims to expand its reach to other enterprise areas.

The $9 million Series A funding will enable Forethought to scale its operations, further develop its AI capabilities, and explore broader applications beyond customer service, aiming to become a general information retrieval system for enterprises.