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Draft:Contextual AI

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Contextual AI
Company typePrivately held company
IndustryInformation technology
Founded2023 (2023)
FoundersDouwe Kiela, Amanpreet Singh
HeadquartersMountain View, California, U.S.
Number of employees
95
Websitecontextual.ai

Contextual AI is an enterprise software company[1] based in Mountain View, California. It develops a platform for building[2] specialized Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) agents for enterprise[3] use. The company was founded in 2023 by Douwe Kiela and Amanpreet Singh, both former AI researchers at Facebook AI Research (FAIR)[4] and Hugging Face. Douwe Kiela previously led the Meta research team that introduced the Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) approach in 2020.[5]

Contextual AI focuses on enterprise generative AI applications using RAG 2.0 technology,[6] with deployments primarily in the technology, banking, finance and media sectors.

History

In June 2023, Contextual AI announced[4] it had raised $20 million in a seed funding round led by Bain Capital Ventures (BCV), with participation from Lightspeed Venture Partners, Greycroft, SV Angel, and several angel investors.

In August 2024, the company raised[7] $80 million in a Series A funding round led by Greycroft,[8] with participation from previous investors[9] including Bain Capital Ventures, Lightspeed, and Conviction Partners.[10] The round also included new backers such as Bezos Expeditions, NVentures (Nvidia),[3] HSBC Ventures, and Snowflake Ventures.[11]

Features

Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) is an artificial intelligence framework[1] that integrates information retrieval with text generation to improve the performance[12] of large language models (LLMs) on complex, knowledge-intensive tasks.[13] It was introduced in 2020 by researchers at Meta AI, including Douwe Kiela, Patrick Lewis and others, in their paper Retrieval-Augmented Generation for Knowledge-Intensive NLP Tasks.[5] RAG enables language models to access[14] and incorporate external information, such as proprietary databases or real-time web content, at query time, instead of relying solely on pre-trained, internal, static knowledge. This architecture addresses common limitations of standard LLMs, including hallucination,[15] outdated information, and lack of attribution to source materials. RAG systems retrieve relevant context through a variety of techniques - including vector search, keyword search, text-to-SQL - and feeds this context into the language model to generate responses.[16] The approach improves factual accuracy, supports domain-specific customization, enables citation of sources, and allows for more updated information without retraining the model itself.

General Availability. In January 2025, Contextual AI announced the general availability[17] of its enterprise platform for building specialized RAG agents.[18] Benchmark results showed that the platform outperformed GPT-4o and Claude 3.5 Sonnet.[19] Early adopters included Qualcomm, which used the platform for their Customer Engineering team needs.[20]

Grounded Language Model. In March 2025, the company introduced a Grounded Language Model (GLM)[21] for factual accuracy in enterprise AI applications. The model achieved an 88% factuality score on the FACTS benchmark - surpassing OpenAI’s GPT-4o, Anthropic’s Claude 3.5 Sonnet, and Google’s Gemini 2.0 Flash.[22][21]

Reranker. Contextual AI's instruction-following reranker[23] allows users to influence the ranking of retrieved documents through natural language instructions, such as prioritizing recent files, specific formats, or content from designated sources.[24]

Applications

Contextual AI’s platform has been adopted across a range of industries, including finance, technology, media and professional services. Clients include Fortune 500 companies such as Qualcomm[25] and HSBC.[9]

Reception

In 2025, Fast Company named[26] Contextual AI among the most innovative companies in its Applied AI category.

References

  1. ^ a b Singhal, Rahul (Nov 30, 2023). "The Power Of RAG: How Retrieval-Augmented Generation Enhances Generative AI". Forbes.
  2. ^ Wiggers, Kyle (June 7, 2023). "Contextual AI launches from stealth to build enterprise-focused language models". TechCrunch.
  3. ^ a b Wolfberg, Elias (August 29, 2024). "From RAG to Richness: Startup Uplevels Retrieval-Augmented Generation for Enterprises". NVIDIA.
  4. ^ a b Franzen, Carl (June 7, 2023). "Contextual AI emerges from stealth with $20M to pursue 'artificial specialized intelligence'". VentureBeat.
  5. ^ a b Douwe, Kiela; Lewis, Patrick; Perez, Ethan; Piktus, Aleksandra; Petroni, Fabio; Karpukhin, Vladimir; Goyal, Naman; Küttler, Heinrich; Lewis, Mike; Yih, Wen-tau; Rocktäschel, Tim; Riedel, Sebastian. "Retrieval-Augmented Generation for Knowledge-Intensive NLP Tasks". arxiv.org. 2005.11401.
  6. ^ Bridgwater, Adrian (January 15, 2025). "Contextual AI Specialized Agents, Even More Raggy than RAG". Techstrong.ai.
  7. ^ "Contextual AI raise $80m to advance AI model enhancement tools". Yahoo Finance. August 2, 2024.
  8. ^ Vu, Marcie (August 1, 2024). "Expanding Our Investment in Contextual AI". Greycroft.
  9. ^ a b Cai, Kenrick (August 1, 2024). "Contextual AI raises $80 mln for model-enhancing technique". Reuters.
  10. ^ Mehra, Amrit (August 2, 2024). "Contextual AI Raises $80M Amid Several Business Partnerships". TechDogs.
  11. ^ Deutscher, Maria (August 2, 2024). "Contextual AI nabs $80M for its 'RAG 2.0' platform". SiliconANGLE.
  12. ^ Gutierrez, Felix (Jan 3, 2024). "Understanding Retrieval Augmented Generation". Medium.
  13. ^ Xu, Sherlock (Jan 25, 2024). "Understanding Retrieval-Augmented Generation: Part 1". BentoML.
  14. ^ "Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG)". Prompt Engineering Guide. April 24, 2025.
  15. ^ Sankar, S. (Feb 13, 2024). "Retrieval Augmented Generation(RAG) - A quick and comprehensive introduction". Medium.
  16. ^ Casey, Matt (August 15, 2024). "RAG: LLM performance boost with retrieval-augmented generation". Snorkel.
  17. ^ "Contextual AI Announces General Availability of Its Enterprise Platform for Building Specialized RAG Agents". Yahoo Finance. January 15, 2025.
  18. ^ "Contextual AI Announces General Availability of Its Enterprise Platform for Building Specialized RAG Agents". Benzinga. January 15, 2025.
  19. ^ Wheatley, Mike (January 15, 2025). "Contextual AI launches RAG 2.0 platform to aid in the development of domain-specific AI agents". SiliconANGLE.
  20. ^ "Contextual AI Announces General Availability of Its Enterprise Platform for Building Specialized RAG Agents". PR Newswire. Jan 15, 2025.
  21. ^ a b Nuñez, Michael (March 4, 2025). "Contextual AI's new AI model crushes GPT-4o in accuracy — here's why it matters". VentureBeat.
  22. ^ Grlowe, John (March 9, 2025). "Contextual AI Introduces Its GLM, a Grounded Language Model, Designed to Surpass GPT-4o in Accuracy". Medium.
  23. ^ "Contextual AI Launches World's First Instruction-Following Reranker". Associated Press. March 11, 2025.
  24. ^ "Contextual AI Launches World's First Instruction-Following Reranker". Seeking Alpha. March 11, 2025.
  25. ^ "Contextual AI's Customers". CB Insights. 2025.
  26. ^ Sullivan, Mark (March 18, 2025). "The most innovative companies in applied AI for 2025". Fast Company.
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