Revealed: How Indian tech prodigies raised $2.3 million from ChatGPT creator Sam Altman and others (WATCH)

By Sunita Iyer  |  First Published Nov 2, 2023, 9:39 PM IST

In an interview on the podcast Overpowered, Aryan Sharma, the CEO of Induced AI, disclosed the intriguing journey of how he managed to persuade industry leaders to invest in their company.


Induced AI, a start-up founded by two ambitious indian teenagers, Aryan Sharma and Ayush Pathak, both 19 years old, has successfully secured $2.3 million in funding, with support from notable investors such as OpenAI co-founder Sam Altman, Peak XV, Daniel Gross, Nat Friedman's AI grant, and various other backers.

In an interview on the podcast Overpowered, Aryan Sharma, the CEO of Induced AI, disclosed the intriguing journey of how he managed to persuade industry leaders to invest in their company. "We used to send cold emails to all of these people that we would read about (industry leaders). I have embarrassing emails from when I was 14 that I sent out to people," Sharma said. 

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"I used to come on SF (San Francisco) trips and meet these interesting people at events. We met him (Sam Altman) once or twice there. Of all the cold outreach emails, some mutuals were formed over time," he added.

"I kind of pitched him that 'I will be a secretary; I'll do whatever you want. I just want to be around you and see how stuff is happening at OpenAI' because they have been releasing interesting papers way before language models came out," the teen CEO said.

Initially, Sam Altman, preoccupied with other ventures such as OpenAI and Helium, had turned down the proposal due to his prior commitments. However, about a year later, during a conversation, the creator of ChatGPT advised Sharma to focus on artificial intelligence, which eventually laid the groundwork for their collaboration.

"I went to him and told him, 'You said we'd come to AI... it has sort of happened, and it'll be awesome to have you with us'. That's basically how that happened," he said.

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Induced AI's platform, according to reports from The TechCrunch, specializes in transforming business workflows from plain English input to pseudo-code, facilitating the management of repetitive back-office tasks. Using Chromium-based browser instances, the platform processes on-screen content in real time and mimics human actions to complete various workflow steps. This innovative approach enables interaction with websites, even in the absence of an API, significantly streamlining and automating these processes for businesses.

Induced AI's groundbreaking approach allows for the translation of human-readable instructions into machine-executable tasks, effectively revolutionizing the way businesses handle their day-to-day operations. This novel technology has not only attracted investment but also promises to bring significant advancements in the field of artificial intelligence and business automation.

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