KUALA LUMPUR: Generative artificial intelligence (AI) platform 1337, has emerged from stealth with the announcement of a US$4 million pre-seed round, aimed at inventing ways to engage with AI for good.
Investors include Credo Ventures, GFR Fund, Treble Capital, Roosh Ventures, while individuals include Hugging Face Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Clément Delangue and impact investor Natalia Vodianova.
Pronounced “Leet” (a nod to early gaming and hacker culture), the company also unveiled an ecosystem of AI-driven micro influencers, known as ‘Entities’, in which each Entity has a unique set of skills and interests and aims to connect, educate and inspire niche communities online.
According to a statement, 1337 plans to use the new funding to develop a scalable platform that will facilitate the expansion of its Entity ecosystem to thousands of niche communities in the near future, while also broadening the company’s global creator community.
“Niche communities collectively represent a massive audience of people online and 1337 is building a new way for these deeply engaged community members to collaborate and interact with each other thanks to the addition of multimodal large language models.
“We view the Entities we are creating as guides, to help facilitate greater connection between people and communities, and later, directly between communities and brands,” said 1337 co-founder and CEO, Jenny Dearing.
The 1337 leadership team includes Dearing, Robin Raszka, Jan Maly and key strategic advisors including former Head of Community at Instagram, Bailey Richardson who currently leads both Marketing and Community at Substack.
With this new funding, 1337 is fueling the creation of a more vibrant online community to help build a future where everyone is celebrated and supported.
Through its AI-driven Entities, 1337 is providing a new way to co-create with AI, championing an open-source-inspired approach that encourages people to engage with creators, brands and each other in a collaborative fashion. – BERNAMA
