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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 use.[3] 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.[5][6] Douwe Kiela previously led the Meta research team[7] that introduced the Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) approach in 2020.[8][9][10]

Contextual AI focuses on enterprise generative AI applications using RAG 2.0 technology,[11] with deployments primarily in the technology, banking, finance and media sectors.[12][13]

History

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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.[2]

In August 2024, the company raised[14] $80 million in a Series A funding round led by Greycroft,[15] with participation from previous investors[13] including Bain Capital Ventures, Lightspeed, and Conviction Partners.[16][17] The round also included new backers such as Bezos Expeditions, NVentures (Nvidia),[3] HSBC Ventures, and Snowflake Ventures.[18]

Features

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Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) is an artificial intelligence framework[1] that integrates information retrieval with text generation to improve the performance[19] of large language models (LLMs) on complex, knowledge-intensive tasks.[20][21] 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.[8] RAG enables language models to access[22] 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.[23] This architecture addresses common limitations of standard LLMs, including hallucination,[24][25] 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.[21] The approach improves factual accuracy,[7] supports domain-specific customization, enables citation of sources, and allows for more updated information without retraining the model itself.[26][27]

General Availability. In January 2025, Contextual AI announced the general availability[28] of its enterprise platform for building specialized RAG agents.[29] Benchmark results showed that the platform outperformed GPT-4o and Claude 3.5 Sonnet.[30][31] Early adopters included Qualcomm, which used the platform for their Customer Engineering team needs.[32]

Grounded Language Model. In March 2025, the company introduced a Grounded Language Model (GLM)[33] 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.[34][33]

Reranker. In March 2025, Contextual AI released an instruction-following reranker[35] that 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.[36]

Applications

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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[37] and HSBC.[13][9]

Reception

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In 2025, Fast Company named[38] Contextual AI among the most innovative companies in its Applied AI category.

References

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  1. ^ a b Singhal, Rahul (November 30, 2023). "The Power Of RAG: How Retrieval-Augmented Generation Enhances Generative AI". Forbes.
  2. ^ a b 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. ^ "Build specialized RAG agents with Contextual AI". Cerebral Valley. January 28, 2025.
  6. ^ Newcomer, Eric (June 7, 2023). "Former Facebook Research Scientists Raise $20 Million Seed Round for Enterprise Foundation Model Startup". www.newcomer.co.
  7. ^ a b Kiela, Douwe (March 20, 2025). "Snowflake Startup Spotlight: Contextual AI". Snowflake.
  8. ^ 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 (2020). "Retrieval-Augmented Generation for Knowledge-Intensive NLP Tasks". arXiv:2005.11401 [cs.CL].
  9. ^ a b Gain, Vish (August 2, 2024). "San Francisco's Contextual AI raises $80m to scale platform". Silicon Republic.
  10. ^ Kiela, Douwe; Riedel, Sebastian; Lewis, Patrick; Piktus, Aleksandra (September 28, 2020). "Retrieval Augmented Generation: Streamlining the creation of intelligent natural language processing models". Meta.
  11. ^ Bridgwater, Adrian (January 15, 2025). "Contextual AI Specialized Agents, Even More Raggy than RAG". Techstrong.ai.
  12. ^ Patangia, Pahal (October 28, 2024). "Fintech Leaders Tap Generative AI for Safer, Faster, More Accurate Financial Services". NVIDIA.
  13. ^ a b c Cai, Kenrick (August 1, 2024). "Contextual AI raises $80 mln for model-enhancing technique". Reuters.
  14. ^ "Contextual AI raise $80m to advance AI model enhancement tools". Yahoo Finance. August 2, 2024.
  15. ^ Vu, Marcie (August 1, 2024). "Expanding Our Investment in Contextual AI". Greycroft.
  16. ^ Mehra, Amrit (August 2, 2024). "Contextual AI Raises $80M Amid Several Business Partnerships". TechDogs.
  17. ^ Fink, Charlie (August 9, 2024). "Contextual AI Raises $80 Million, Judge Calls Google A Monopolist, Bytedance Intros Jimeng Text-To-Video AI". Forbes.
  18. ^ Deutscher, Maria (August 2, 2024). "Contextual AI nabs $80M for its 'RAG 2.0' platform". SiliconANGLE.
  19. ^ Gutierrez, Felix (January 3, 2024). "Understanding Retrieval Augmented Generation". Medium.
  20. ^ Xu, Sherlock (January 25, 2024). "Understanding Retrieval-Augmented Generation: Part 1". BentoML.
  21. ^ a b Casey, Matt (August 15, 2024). "RAG: LLM performance boost with retrieval-augmented generation". Snorkel.
  22. ^ "Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG)". Prompt Engineering Guide. April 24, 2025.
  23. ^ DataStax Developers (October 13, 2023). "Where did Retrieval Augmented Generation come from, and where is it going?". YouTube.
  24. ^ Sankar, S. (February 13, 2024). "Retrieval Augmented Generation(RAG) - A quick and comprehensive introduction". Medium.
  25. ^ Mellor, Chris (August 8, 2024). "WEKA helps Contextual AI get rid of chatbot hallucinations". Blocks & Files.
  26. ^ Turck, Matt (March 6, 2025). "Top AI Researcher on GPT 4.5, DeepSeek and Agentic RAG | Douwe Kiela, CEO, Contextual AI". The MAD Podcast with Matt Turck.
  27. ^ Turow, Jon (March 26, 2025). "RAG Inventor Talks Agents, Grounded AI, and Enterprise Impact". Madrona.
  28. ^ "Contextual AI Announces General Availability of Its Enterprise Platform for Building Specialized RAG Agents". Yahoo Finance. January 15, 2025.
  29. ^ "Contextual AI Announces General Availability of Its Enterprise Platform for Building Specialized RAG Agents". Benzinga. January 15, 2025.
  30. ^ Wheatley, Mike (January 15, 2025). "Contextual AI launches RAG 2.0 platform to aid in the development of domain-specific AI agents". SiliconANGLE.
  31. ^ "Contextual AI Announces General Availability of Its Enterprise Platform for Building Specialized RAG Agents". Fox 8 News. January 15, 2025.
  32. ^ "Contextual AI Announces General Availability of Its Enterprise Platform for Building Specialized RAG Agents". PR Newswire. Jan 15, 2025.
  33. ^ a b Nuñez, Michael (March 4, 2025). "Contextual AI's new AI model crushes GPT-4o in accuracy — here's why it matters". VentureBeat.
  34. ^ Grlowe, John (March 9, 2025). "Contextual AI Introduces Its GLM, a Grounded Language Model, Designed to Surpass GPT-4o in Accuracy". Medium.
  35. ^ "Contextual AI Launches World's First Instruction-Following Reranker". Associated Press. March 11, 2025.
  36. ^ "Contextual AI Launches World's First Instruction-Following Reranker". Seeking Alpha. March 11, 2025.
  37. ^ "Contextual AI's Customers". CB Insights. 2025.
  38. ^ Sullivan, Mark (March 18, 2025). "The most innovative companies in applied AI for 2025". Fast Company.
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