Dubai-based entrepreneur creates a personal AI assistant that will become your “lifelong companion”

Talking to Arto Bendiken about his new startup feels like a replay back to the futurea film that was ahead of its time, and he even mentioned it at the end of his talk.

He’s not building flying cars, but he wants to develop the technology that will give us the future.

The Dubai-based entrepreneur is developing a personal artificial intelligence tool that is “like an angel on your shoulder, always there, always present” to help people achieve their “life goals,” i.e. Essentially, he said, he aims to help people achieve “victory in life.” ”.

In other words, Haltia.ai, a smartphone app, allows people to expand their social graph, read and respond to emails, conduct research, draft speeches and content, manage their calendars, and more. A personal AI assistant that can provide critical feedback. Create documents through all-natural voice interaction.

The company says the default avatars, Halford and Tiana, will become “lifelong companions” who will continue to evolve as technology develops and unlock new features.

Bendiken, the company’s co-founder and chief technology officer, said privacy is an important part of the platform.

“AI lives on your phone or laptop, it doesn’t live in the cloud. This is a critical difference from what other people are building,” he says.

“It means you can trust it because it’s just you. You can actually have private conversations, even private ones, because you know this information will never leave your device.” “We don’t upload anything to the cloud; it’s all encrypted and on the device. And the devices can talk to each other, which means your laptop syncs directly with your phone,” he says.

The app captures notes from users’ voice conversations and can also import information such as LinkedIn profiles, contacts, address books, and other data sources.

“Importantly, knowledge can be modified using only voice. Of course, in the future, this is a few years away, but potentially all the time, passively, while the user goes about their day. “The idea is to listen to people and increase your knowledge from the bits of information you hear. But no one has that ability, and it takes…at least a year,” he says.

“Hartia means master in Finnish. That makes sense.” [in] You will be able to control the AI. ”

AI is currently gaining traction globally and is experiencing a boom in all aspects of technology.

Goldman Sachs Economic Research said in an August report that global AI investment is expected to reach $200 billion by 2025.

Specifically, according to a report by Mordor Intelligence, the size of the intelligent virtual assistant market is expected to reach $60.83 billion by 2029, up from an estimated $14.77 billion in 2024, with an annual average It is expected to grow at around 33%.

Deep neural networks, machine learning and other advances in AI are making more virtual assistants possible, the report says.

The versions in use today are chatbots and smart speakers, such as Apple’s Siri and Microsoft’s Cortana, but the market is set to become even more sophisticated.

In October, Microsoft announced a new digital assistant powered by generative AI at the Gitex exhibition in Dubai. Its functionality and appearance can be customized to suit specific user requirements.

The AI ​​bot, called Mai, has a ChatGPT-like interface and can help users navigate tasks and access services.

Microsoft UAE general manager Naim Yazbeck said training can be done in any industry, including services such as healthcare and education. The National at that time.

Haltia claims to support users “beyond” standard AI capabilities, offering utilities ranging from basic tasks to complex predictive capabilities.

Bendiken, a self-proclaimed “cyberpunk,” has been working on the foundations of what is now Haltia since 2008.

Bendiken started his entrepreneurial journey very early in his native Finland, starting working at the age of 11, taking his first programming job at 15, and registering his first company at 18 – initially following in his father’s footsteps. Bendiken said.

Realizing that Finland did not offer a suitable ecosystem for “driven and ambitious people”, he left the country and moved to Spain and then to Berlin, where he started his first “proper” startup. It became the base of

The startup, which built the kind of databases now used in AI, was “a little ahead of the curve” and received orders from the likes of U.S.-based NXP Semiconductors and the U.S. Navy, but demand was slow. was limited to large scale. organization. Bendiken sold his stake in the company in 2016.

He moved to Ukraine and relocated to Dubai, where Haltia was founded, in October after the coronavirus and the war. It is also incorporated in the United States.

“We estimate that we are about six months ahead of everyone else.” [in terms of the Haltia’s offering]” he says.

“In a year, it will be completely normal for mobile phones to have some kind of AI built into them locally. So we’re a little bit ahead of that curve.”

This app is currently only compatible with some of the latest iOS smartphones, including the Apple iPhone 15, iPhone 14, iPhone 13 and iPhone 12 Pro and Max models. Also available on the latest iPad Pro models and iPad Air. Five.

Haltia also aims to expand to support Android in the future.

It operates on a subscription-based model with in-app purchases and hopes to reach both individual and corporate customers.

The basic download is free, but paid tiers range from $9 per month to $19.99 per month for individual packages. We also have family packages and packages for corporate teams.

The company says its premium members will have a dedicated relationship manager, and its goal is to reach 1 million such customers.

Providing free options is “very important, because if you don’t you lose mindshare,” Bendiken said.

The app is currently in closed beta and is available only to staff, family members of staff, insiders, advisors, and investors. Our immediate plans are to expand into a wider beta phase and open a waiting list.

Once all the pieces are in place, the official launch is expected in the second quarter of this year, he said.

“Despite tremendous time pressure, we never launch too early,” he says.

To support the launch, the company is planning a trip to Silicon Valley to raise funds.

So far, Bendiken and co-founder and CEO Talal Tabet have invested $1.2 million in Haltia, and have also raised more than $500,000 from family and friends.

The company is currently planning a pre-seed round of approximately $2 million, followed by a seed round of $10 million.

“So far, we have limited ourselves to raising funds in the UAE. And I have to say it is not as easy as in Silicon Valley,” he says.

He said that while there is capital available to scale up established startups, the ecosystem is not yet mature enough for the early stages.

However, the UAE is a future market and a “frontier”.

“I’m drawn to places where there’s ambition and drive and vision. And you know, we live by the stars, not the gutter. And this, at least to me, is what the UAE is all about.” he says.

“With a great standard of living, you’re surrounded by people who have ambition and energy and want to better their lives. It doesn’t matter what their parents or grandparents achieved or where they are on their life journey. They can improve when they come here.”

Q&A with Arto Bendiken, Chief Technology Officer and Co-Founder of Haltia.ai

Who is your role model?

many. Paul Graham, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, the list goes on and on.

I’m a big reader. So when I say someone’s name, it’s almost always because I read something they wrote. And by the same token, there’s Peter Thiel. I’ve been following him for a long time and read everything he said on these issues. And Marc Andreessen.

If you could start over, would you do anything differently?

I don’t think so. It’s going well.

What new skills did you learn while setting up Haltia?

I can definitely say I’m learning a lot on the fundraising side.Despite being raised [money] Before, there was actually always something to learn. And it seems like this is still an ongoing learning process.

What advice would you give to other entrepreneurs?

First, learn the basics of whatever you do.

Another thing is to not give up easily. Many people give up easily.

Third, don’t be afraid to fail…I have failed several times. Failure is just learning and moving on.

what are your goals?

Fundamentally, I want to contribute to the realization of the world I grew up reading about.I mean, I’m a consumer of science fiction and that’s why we name our conferences [AI gatherings in Dubai] Asimov Meetup named after Isaac Asimov, who invented robotics, invented AI alignment, and invented prompt engineering 100 years ago.

I’d like to actually move the world a little more like the world I read about as a kid, rather than this kind of rut we’ve been stuck in for decades. You know, we were promised flying cars. back to the future And all of that. And in fact, the UAE is the only country that has done that and is taking it seriously. So that’s good.

Updated: March 18, 2024, 4:50 a.m.