The AI agent developed by Upstream makes it possible to detect spam, identify messages awaiting a response or write personalized draft responses.
First round of financing for Upstream. There start-up French company, which has developed an AI agent that navigates through its users’ mailboxes, announced on June 3 to raise $3 million from Y Combinator, Connect Ventures and around thirty business angels.
“The future of work relies on collaboration between humans and AI agents. However, the tool on which employees still spend the most time remains electronic messaging, which was never designed to integrate this type of collaboration,” explains Louis Lecat, CEO and co-founder of Upstream.
Until now, the solution developed by Upstream in 2023 was only accessible in beta version by invitation. On the occasion of this fundraisingthe start-up is now opening its platform to the general public. Its AI assistant takes care of many tasks related to email management: spam detection, identification of messages requiring a response, drafting a personalized response or even suggesting the most appropriate time to follow up.
“The AI writes responses that reflect the user’s writing style and adapts the tone to each interlocutor. It relies on meeting notes, the agenda as well as the information contained in the mailbox in order to generate truly personalized messages,” explains the manager. Final control, however, remains in the hands of the user. “It is always the human who validates the sending of the message prepared by the AI”. Note that the start-up’s AI agent is based on Anthropic and OpenAI models, and allows the user to choose which one they wish to use.
After Gmail, soon Outlook
Currently, Upstream is only compatible with Gmail. A limitation which does not prevent the young company from claiming “thousands of customers who have tested the beta version all over the world, mainly businesses but also individuals for their personal mailboxes”. Although a free version exists, access to full features requires a paid subscription.
With this fundraising, Upstream plans to expand the compatibility of its solution to other messaging services, including Outlook. The funding should also allow the start-up to make some recruitments, without exploding its workforce: “Our team is currently made up of six senior employees. There will perhaps be around ten of us by the end of the year,” concludes Louis Lecat.
