Key Takeaways:
Sooth Labs, an artificial intelligence startup founded by former Meta Platforms Inc. researchers, is raising approximately $50 million to build predictive models for geopolitical and market events, valuing the new company at roughly $335 million.
"Because Kalshi and Polymarket have been so successful, the world has started thinking in bets,” Aydin Senkut, founder and managing partner at Felicis Ventures, which is set to lead the funding round, said. “Everyone’s mind has shifted to, ‘What do I know that gives me an edge to predict X happening?’”
The funding round includes backing from AI heavyweights Yann LeCun and Jeff Dean, with Meta’s Chief Technology Officer Andrew Bosworth advising. Sooth’s software demonstrated its capability by forecasting a 16 percent probability of another World Health Organization-declared pandemic by 2028 and a 33 percent chance of an Anthropic PBC initial public offering this year.
The Pittsburgh-based startup aims to equip businesses in finance, defense, and insurance with tools for superior capital allocation and risk management, a market currently dominated by statistical models. By training its AI on diverse datasets including video, audio, and proprietary client information, Sooth plans to challenge established forecasting methods and capitalize on the growing corporate appetite for predictive analytics.
Sooth's approach seeks to differentiate itself from traditional forecasting algorithms, which often rely on more limited statistical models. The company's plan to incorporate a mix of inputs including video, audio, and text across large, cross-industry datasets could provide a more nuanced and accurate predictive capability, challenging platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket which are based on public wagering.
The company is led by Chief Executive Officer Yaser Sheikh, a consulting professor at Carnegie Mellon who previously served as a vice president at Meta. He is joined by co-founder Ruslan Salakhutdinov, a prominent deep learning researcher who served as Apple's first director of AI research. Their vision is to enable businesses to make better decisions in high-stakes areas, moving beyond the public prediction markets to create enterprise-grade forecasting tools.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.
