A staggering 95% of generative AI pilots at firms are failing, in accordance with a latest report printed by MIT’s NANDA initiative. However slightly than giving up on the know-how altogether, probably the most superior organizations are experimenting with agentic AI methods that may study and be supervised.

That’s the place Maisa AI is available in. The year-old startup has constructed its total strategy across the premise that enterprise automation requires accountable AI brokers, not opaque black packing containers. With a brand new, $25 million seed spherical led by European VC agency Creandum, it has now launched Maisa Studio, a model-agnostic self-serve platform that helps customers deploy digital employees that may be educated with pure language.

Whereas which may sound acquainted — paying homage to so-called vibe coding platforms like Cursor and the Creandum-backed Lovable — Maisa argues that its strategy is essentially completely different. “As a substitute of utilizing AI to construct the responses, we use AI to construct the method that must be executed to get to the response — what we name ‘chain-of-work,” Maisa CEO David Villalón advised TechCrunch.

The principal architect behind this course of is Maisa’s co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer, Manuel Romero, who had beforehand labored with Villalón at Spanish AI startup Clibrain. In 2024, the duo teamed as much as construct an answer to hallucinations after seeing firsthand that “you may not depend on AI,” Villalón stated.

The pair isn’t skeptical about AI, however they suppose it gained’t be possible for people to overview “three months of labor accomplished in 5 minutes.” To deal with this, Maisa employs a system known as HALP, standing for Human-Augmented LLM Processing. This practice technique works like college students on the blackboard — it asks customers about their wants whereas the digital employees define every step they are going to comply with.

The startup additionally developed the Data Processing Unit (KPU), a deterministic system designed to restrict hallucinations. Whereas Maisa began out from this technical problem slightly than a use case, it quickly discovered that its guess on trustworthiness and accountability resonated with firms hoping to use AI to vital duties. As an example, purchasers that presently use Maisa in manufacturing embrace a big financial institution, in addition to firms within the automotive manufacturing and vitality sectors.

By serving these enterprise purchasers, Maisa hopes to place itself as a extra superior type of robotic course of automation (RPA) that unlocks productiveness features with out requiring firms to depend on inflexible predefined guidelines or intensive guide programming. To fulfill their wants, the startup additionally affords them both deployment in its safe cloud or via on-premise deployment. 

This enterprise-first strategy means Maisa’s buyer base remains to be very small in comparison with the hundreds of thousands flocking to freemium vibe-coding platforms. However as these platforms at the moment are exploring learn how to win enterprise prospects, Maisa is shifting in the other way with Maisa Studio, which is designed to develop its buyer funnel and ease adoption.

The startup additionally plans to broaden with current prospects which have operations in a number of international locations. With twin headquarters in Valencia and San Francisco, Maisa itself already has a foothold within the U.S., as mirrored in its cap desk; its $5 million pre-seed round final December was led by the San Francisco-based enterprise corporations NFX and Village World. 

As well as, TechCrunch realized solely that U.S. agency Forgepoint Capital Worldwide participated on this new spherical by way of its European joint venture with Spanish financial institution Banco Santander, highlighting its attraction for regulated sectors.

Specializing in complicated use circumstances demanding accountability from non-technical customers might be a differentiator for Maisa, whose opponents embrace CrewAI and lots of different AI-powered, business-focused workflow automation merchandise. In a LinkedIn put up, Villalón highlighted this “AI framework gold rush,” warning that the “fast begin” turns into a protracted nightmare whenever you want reliability, auditability, or the flexibility to repair what went improper.”

Doubling down on its objective to assist AI scale, Maisa plans to make use of its funding to develop from 35 to as many as 65 individuals by the primary quarter of 2026 with a purpose to meet demand. Beginning within the final quarter of this yr, the startup anticipates fast progress because it begins serving its ready checklist. “We’re going to present the market that there’s a firm that’s delivering what has been promised, and that it’s working,” Villalón stated.