The Power of AI in Writing Strong Business Pitches: AutogenAI Raises $22.3 Million

Business proposals are the lifeblood of winning deals, and London-based startup AutogenAI is poised to revolutionize the way businesses create stronger pitches. With the help of generative AI, AutogenAI has developed a powerful tool that promises to improve the strike rate of pitches. The startup has recently secured $22.3 million in funding from Blossom Capital, a significant milestone that will enable AutogenAI to expand its platform and customer base.

AutogenAI’s Impressive Success

Although AutogenAI was founded less than a year ago, it has already managed to attract 28 clients. The startup’s customer list includes a wide range of businesses, from global management consultancies and BPO organizations to construction companies and non-profit organizations applying for grant funding. This success demonstrates the effectiveness of AutogenAI’s tool in writing winning pitches.

However, AutogenAI faces a challenge in the form of customers’ skepticism and apprehension around using AI to replace or augment human work. Many customers still believe that AI may compromise the quality of their work. As a result, AutogenAI has chosen not to disclose the names of its customers. Sean Williams, the founder and CEO of AutogenAI, acknowledges this issue and notes the prevailing sentiment among customers.

“There is still a feeling among customers that using AI would somehow detract from the quality of the work,” Williams said in an interview. This reluctance to fully embrace AI underscores the importance of building trust and confidence in AutogenAI’s technology.

AutogenAI’s Solution: A Winning Combination of AI and Human Expertise

Sean Williams brings valuable experience from his years of working for major private firms bidding to provide services to the U.K. government. He understands the significance of both content and budget in winning tenders. AutogenAI’s platform is built on large language models (LLMs) from OpenAI and other sources, combined with a client’s structured and unstructured proprietary data. AutogenAI has also developed its own interface to help users query information and create pitches based on a company’s most successful past work.

AutogenAI’s approach involves producing initial pitch drafts, which are then further tailored by the client’s team before being submitted for a contract. While a service like ChatGPT can generate a business pitch, AutogenAI’s tool offers a higher level of specificity, making it more useful for its users.

Williams estimates that AutogenAI’s software can accelerate the pitch-writing process by a staggering 800%. This speaks to the first area AutogenAI aims to address: helping companies save time and work more effectively by streamlining the pitch-writing process. The platform reduces procurement costs by approximately 10%, improving the overall margins on deals. It also significantly cuts down the time taken to write the first drafts of bids, allowing teams to focus on strategic additions.

The Interest of Investors and Potential Customers

Ophelia Brown, the founder of Blossom Capital, expresses significant interest in AutogenAI’s potential. While startups focused on building large language models (LLMs) like OpenAI have captured attention, applications like AutogenAI could have broader appeal for businesses looking to make purchasing decisions.

Brown highlights that clear return on investment (ROI) is the key to attracting companies willing to pay for tools that save time and reduce workforce requirements. AutogenAI’s remarkable growth in its first nine months of operations demonstrates the value it provides to businesses seeking efficiency and cost savings.

Expanding Horizons: AutogenAI’s Vision

AutogenAI has set its sights on becoming a leader in helping businesses win more contracts and work more effectively. While companies like OpenAI are pushing the boundaries of artificial general intelligence (AGI), AutogenAI’s focus remains on delivering practical solutions that drive tangible results.

With its recent funding, AutogenAI plans to expand its platform, hire more talent, and further enhance its offering. The startup aims to continue revolutionizing the pitch-writing process, empowering businesses to outshine their competition and achieve remarkable success.

Business is regularly won and lost on the strength of a proposal. Now, a startup out of London called AutogenAI has built a tool based on generative AI that it claims can help businesses write stronger pitches to improve that strike rate, and it has won some money of its own: $22.3 million from Blossom Capital, which it is using to hire more talent, expand its platform and grow its customer base.

The investment values AutogenAI in the region of “hundreds of millions,” we understand from a source. It previously raised some $3.5 million.

As a measure of AutogenAI’s success, it’s managed to pick up 28 clients since it first opened for business less than a year ago.

And as a measure of just how guarded those customers are about the secret sauce they’re using to win their deals, and maybe the taboo that exists around using AI tools to replace or augment human work, AutogenAI is not disclosing a single actual customer name.

“There is still a feeling among customers that using AI would somehow detract from the quality of the work,” Sean Williams, the founder and CEO, said in an interview, explaining why no names are being disclosed.

(AutogenAI does note that the list includes “a global management consultancy, global BPO organisations, quoted and private construction companies and facilities management businesses, as well as charities and non-profits applying for grant funding.”)

Williams cut his teeth on years of working for some of the biggest private firms bidding to provide services to the U.K. government, an enormous business that collectively is worth nearly $500 billion annually. Being successful in those tenders was a matter of experience, understanding not just what content to include and how to present it. But it was also a matter of budget: those with the funds to invest in building strong bids regularly had a stronger chance of winning deals, and those deals can be as

AutogenAI’s aim is to address both of these areas.

Williams said that the platform is built on an amalgamation of large language models — it uses LLMs from OpenAI and others, he said — combined with a client’s structured and unstructured proprietary data, and an interface developed by AutogenAI itself to help users query information and create pitches that in turn are based on a company’s most successful past work. These are then presented to the client’s team, which further tailors them — or potentially rejects them — before they are submitted to pitch for a contract.

In theory, one could ask ChatGPT to build a business pitch, but Williams response is that AutogenAI’s versions will be considerably more specific and thus ultimately more useful to its users.

“Companies like OpenAI are focused on AGI, super intelligence,” he said. “We’ve got a much smaller problem: we just want to help our customers win more work and work more effectively.” He estimated that AutogenAI’s software could speed up the process of writing a strong pitch “by 800%.”

That 800% speaks to the second area of winning bids, which is the required budget outlay. Williams estimates that some 10% of a total contract value can be eaten up by the cost of putting a bid together in the traditional way. His claim is that by using its tools it cuts down procurement costs by some 10%, improving the margins on those deals overall, with the time taken to write the first drafts of bids cut down by 70% and helping those working on bids to focus more on strategic additions.

Ophelia Brown, the founder of Blossom Capital, said that the firm was not yet using AutogenAI itself but that it planned to when it next raised funds itself. Its interest in the startup stemmed from the fact that while startups building LLMs are getting a lot of attention right now, those building applications like AutogenAI are closer to where a wider range businesses might make purchasing decisions.

“Where this gets interesting is when you can see clear ROI on the spend for the product,” she said. “Companies are willing to pay for something that can help them save time and headcount.” That’s been proven out, she added, through its growth in its first nine months of business.