LlamaIndex Unveils Cloud Service for Unstructured Data Agents

AI agents are all the rage these days, and while everyone's got their own take on what they are, the gist is they're AI tools that can do stuff on their own. The buzz around agents is pretty intense, but one company, LlamaIndex, was ahead of the curve. Started by ex-Uber research scientists Jerry Liu and Simon Suo back in 2023, LlamaIndex helps developers whip up custom agents that can work with unstructured data.

"LlamaIndex kicked off as a fun open-source project in November 2022," Liu shared with TechCrunch. "I got hooked on figuring out how large language models (LLMs) could tap into proprietary data not in their training set, so I built some tools to help developers index and use that data in their LLM apps."

With LlamaIndex's open-source software, which has been downloaded millions of times on GitHub, developers can craft custom agents that pull out info, whip up reports and insights, and even take specific actions. LlamaIndex offers data connectors and tools like LlamaParse, which turns messy data into something neat and usable for AI apps.

Sure, there are other open-source frameworks out there for building AI agents, but Liu says LlamaIndex stands out with its tools for data ingestion, management, indexing, and retrieval. It can hook up data from files like PDFs and PowerPoint slides, as well as apps like Notion and Slack, to an agent.

Big names like Salesforce, KPMG, and Carlyle are already using LlamaIndex, according to Liu.

"All these other solutions tackle specific issues at different layers of the generative AI stack, but then it's up to the developer to stitch them together to make a working agent," Liu explained. "That's a real headache that slows down getting agents into production. LlamaIndex's goal is to offer the most secure, accurate, and user-friendly platform for building complete knowledge agents."

LlamaIndex's next move is an enterprise service called LlamaCloud, built on their open-source stuff. It lets customers set up cloud-hosted agents that can handle and manipulate unstructured data in all sorts of formats.

You can roll out LlamaCloud as a software-as-a-service or in a virtual private cloud, and it comes with goodies like role-based access control and single sign-on, Liu mentioned.

To help fund LlamaCloud's growth, LlamaIndex just nabbed $19 million in a Series A round led by Norwest Venture Partners, with Greylock also chipping in. That brings their total funding to $27.5 million, and Liu says they'll use it to grow their 20-person team and keep developing their product.

"We've got enough cash to see us through the early stages of rolling out our platform commercially," Liu said. "We're betting big on developers playing a key role in bringing GenAI apps to businesses."