Former Tesla, Google engineers raise $4 million for AI-text detection startup Pangram

Pangram, a startup founded by former Tesla and Google employees, has raised about $4 million in seed funding to expand its tools that detect AI-generated text as schools and businesses grapple with the surging use of applications such as ChatGPT.

The seed round was led by venture capital firm ScOp and was joined by Script Capital as well as Cadenza, Pangram said on Tuesday. Haystack VC was a lead investor in the initial pre-seed round, it added, without disclosing its valuation.

With AI-generated text flooding classrooms and offices, schools and businesses are scrambling to tell human writing from machine output, fuelling demand for tools that verify authorship.

Pangram, whose customers include question-and-answer website Quora and trustworthiness rating service NewsGuard, is betting its active learning algorithm will give it an edge over dominant industry players such as Turnitin.

The company uses a feedback loop that helps its system learn from tricky examples by creating similar ones to train on. It also builds on open-source models to keep computing costs down.

"What makes great machine learning products in general is great data. And I think that's like where we've kind of focused most of our effort," cofounder and technology chief Bradley Emi said in an interview.

Emi, a former Tesla engineer, co-founded Pangram with fellow Stanford graduate Max Spero. He said the startup, which has eight employees, will use the new funds to grow its team and expand its offerings, including the consumer-facing business.

The company charges individuals $15 a month for up to 600 AI scans, while professional and developer plans are priced at $45 and $100, respectively, its website shows.