Pienso

About Pienso

Pienso operates an artificial intelligence (AI) development platform that enables individuals without a technical background to build and customize their own AI models. The company was established in 2016 by co-founders Karthik Dinakar and Birago Jones. Their journey began at the MIT Media Lab during a project focused on using machine learning to detect online bullying among teenagers. The founders quickly realized that standard language models, trained on sources like The Wall Street Journal, were incapable of understanding the nuanced slang used by teens. This led to the core insight behind Pienso: subject matter experts, not just engineers, are essential for training effective AI. This realization prompted them to create a platform that empowers domain specialists to imbue AI models with their unique knowledge without writing a single line of code.

The company's platform functions as an AI orchestration layer, providing a no-code, self-serve environment for users to interact with and train large language models (LLMs). It is designed to be interoperable with major LLM providers and can be deployed either in the cloud or on-premise, ensuring clients maintain full control and privacy over their data. Pienso’s business model centers on enabling clients from diverse sectors such as government, media, and pharmaceuticals to analyze vast amounts of unstructured text data, including customer calls, research documents, and news articles. For instance, Sky, the UK's largest pay-TV broadcaster, utilizes Pienso to analyze over 500,000 weekly customer calls to gauge sentiment and identify urgent issues. The platform facilitates this by allowing users to ingest raw data, refine categorizations through a 'Fingerprinting Workspace,' and apply trained models to annotate datasets for deep learning analysis.

Pienso's strategic development has been supported by significant financial backing. The company's first seed funding round occurred in 2017. A major milestone was achieved on March 12, 2024, when Pienso announced a $10 million Series A funding round led by Latimer Ventures. This capital is intended to expand the team and further develop the platform. The company's approach addresses a critical market need by bridging the gap between domain expertise and AI development, allowing organizations to create highly specific, powerful, and secure AI solutions tailored to their unique operational language and context.