“The GenAI hype is real. It is not the metaverse”
“The GenAI hype is real. It is not the metaverse”
Noam Fine and Yossi Marouani have just founded their fourth company - this time looking to tap into Generative AI
“I think what’s interesting about Generative AI is that it creates a different landscape and a different way to do something that investors are considering,” said Noam Fine, co-founder and CEO of Hear.AI. “They need to look at it differently because what it did was democratize technology significantly. Everyone now has access to similar resources, these incredible resources. If you're using OpenAI APIs, everyone can grab these APIs and grab this amazing stuff. So the barrier from a technology perspective has been lowered significantly.”
Fine co-founded Hear.AI alongside Yossi Marouani, and the company signals the pair’s fourth company together. Over the last 16 years, the duo founded Sensiya, acquired by will.i.am's I.AM+, and OverAI, which was acquired by Vonage. Today, their latest venture into the tech space surrounds generative AI and taps into a whole new space that has everyone talking.
The pair admit to being attracted to ‘growth technology’, ones that can disrupt markets and investors. While the current company is self-funded, Fine and Marouani have seen how technologies like ChatGPT have stirred interest within the tech industry, leading them to Hear.AI. The company is still in its early days but the pair confirmed to CTech that it hopes to look at the ‘operational aspects’ of communication within a company and use data and AI to transform costly operations into growth and revenue generators.
“This is a factor for investors looking to find the right business,” Fine continued. “The right product-market fit, seeing as you understand the market and you understand customers. If your company is based on technology, everyone has access to the same technology today.”
Today, internet users can’t go far without seeing Midjourney-created images circling online. Photos are being generated for our entertainment, music is being played for our ears, and text-based ChatGPT is helping everyone with their writing assignments (except this writer). In fact, 70% of Gen-Z use GenAI with 58% of them claiming it helps them make better decisions. “Almost half (48%) of Gen Z believe they are on their way to mastering the technology,” reports ZDNet when citing a recent study by Salesforce.
“I think there are two areas where we are different,” added Marouani, who serves as Hear.AI’s CTO. “Creating our team - right now we are LLM at the core. Most companies have it as a feature. We are looking for talent that is open-minded and doesn't have much experience with the old technology. Generative Technology helps us build a better team that is more productive, and we are building those generative tools for companies to make better decisions and understand the data.”
There have been plenty of trends in recent years, such as Facebook’s venture into the metaverse, or tech bros’ promise that NFTs would transform digital art ownership. Whereas the technology behind crypto never actually materialized into real-world applications, the pair confirms that we are already seeing examples of GenAI in the world.
“It's a super interesting race like we've never seen and I think you can also see that in the technology and how it evolves super fast,” Fine said. “There are very large communities and tons of stuff on Twitter [now X] every day - someone is building something that you didn't think about before. It’s a little bit like an underground culture where people are building stuff and releasing it with open source for different types of communities. Everything is different. The pace, the culture, everything.”
“The community was waiting for this kind of technology to get excited about,” confirmed Marouani when discussing the reaction to Gen AI. “And once it's out, people have started to play with it, getting it to a larger audience… In the news, you see new developments. It gets everyone excited. I think the hype is real. It is not the metaverse.”
Hear.AI is still in its early days with only a few select customers, but the company hopes to open its platform to the wider public soon.
