Asa Cox (Arcanum AI)
Wellington-based start-up Arcanum AI is looking to expand its reach to Australia and the US from 2024 after signing a multi-year strategic collaboration agreement (SCA) with Amazon Web Services (AWS).
Under the SCA, AWS will work with Arcanum to help start-ups, small- and medium-sized businesses (SMB) and larger enterprises adopt artificial intelligence (AI), including generative AI (genAI). However, particular emphasis is being placed on the SMB market, according to Arcanum CEO Asa Cox.
“We're aligning with the challenges of small- and medium-sized businesses, which is around the challenges of recruiting and retaining talent,” he said.
“Whilst there is a lot of talk economically about a downturn, there's still a lot of challenges for recruiting and retaining talent and there's still a lot of manual work that's going into running these businesses which takes away a lot of their time for growing.
“So, our focus is really helping them release their internal capacity to work on more meaningful things, have more impact in their businesses. So we're packaging up the AWS technology and our own software engineering into AI assistants.”
Currently, Arcanum offers two AI assistant solutions – Archie, aimed at financial services, and Arcos, for customer support services.
Outside of the SCA, AWS is set to support the start-up’s expansion into Australia and the US with aims to double in size, via initiatives such as the cloud giant’s Generative AI Centre of Excellence (AI).
Currently, Arcanum has multiple early-stage customers in Australia, as well as one data scientist on the Gold Coast.
Speaking to ARN, Cox said the business is looking to go “much, much bigger [and] more bold into the market,” with plans to double its revenue.
“Arcanum AI launched on AWS from day one and AWS has been supporting us through programs like AWS Activate where we are able to access AWS credits and technical support to rapidly scale our business since 2016,” he added in a statement.
“Signing a strategic collaboration agreement with AWS deepens our cooperation with AWS and is a testament to our pioneering vision of supporting customers with AI adoption. By leveraging the broadest and deepest set of AWS services and tapping on AWS’s world-leading global infrastructure, we're one step closer to expanding our footprint internationally and making AI, generative AI and ML [machine learning] technologies more accessible to our customers and support their growth.”
Additionally, Arcanum will also kickstart a marketing program for SMBs and tap into AWS’ network of customers and partners.
“We are proud to collaborate with Arcanum AI to support their goals to expand the use of generative AI and power industries and SMBs,” said Tiffany Bloomquist, New Zealand Country Manager, Commercial Sales.
“AWS is committed to making AI and ML more accessible to all organisations including startups, SMBs and larger enterprises across all industries. We’re delighted to share this same vision with Arcanum AI and support the startup to accelerate their AI innovation and empower customers to address real-world industry needs.”
