Since 2021, a span of four years now, I’ve looked at startups on republic.com for non-accredited people, aka non rich folks trying to get rich via equity crowdfunding into startups. Personal AI is by far and away the best startup I’ve seen that fits the criteria to hit a unicorn valuation over $1 billion (or even decacorn at >$10 billion valuation). Per a crowd SAFE agreement, you now have the chance to invest into and own a piece of an artificial intelligence company that is still in its infant stages. They are currently raising on Republic with a valuation of 30m, and if and when they should raise again, the valuation is likely going to be significantly higher than that:

https://republic.com/personal-ai#

The company goal is to raise $1m, but is able to raise up to $5m in the offering, with a deadline of April 12, 2024. I suspect the will get several million by the deadline, if not the entire $5m.

Founded in 2020 by Suman Kanuganti, the company’s mission is to create a personalized AI tool for every person on the planet, to be able to have an AI custom tailored to your memory, knowledge, needs, tastes and preferences. It allows for excellent memory call at the tip of your fingertips of anything you wrote or recorded digitally previously. Effectively it is going to augment everything about you. Businesses can use this to have a AI representing a CEO, owner, executive, or subject matter domain expert in answering questions, as if it was coming directly from the person themselves. The average person might use the AI to record in it’s previous digital history travel preferences of where to stay, price range of stay, and offer recommendations. This could even extend to food options for what to eat. Law and health experts are already sharing proprietary knowledge with personal AI in helping to facilitate this process.

The AI product can be downloaded onto your computer or onto iOS, with the first 2 months as a free trial to save paying $400/year at Personal AI’s site:

https://www.personal.ai/

Looking at the reviews and user feedbacks; the product appears to be quite good already and is only just getting started. The AI after several digital uploads of pictures, text, videos start to grow as if it were a baby version of yourself into your adult version. With 100% memory recall, you can recall exactly what you want from the AI, giving you the potential to have 100% self-awareness and informed decisions based on exactly who you are and what you want. Here’s an example of one on Personal AI’s YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykQEd6scWhg&t=2s&ab_channel=PersonalAI

I downloaded the free version on my laptop and found it to be pretty good. I was able to invite people by email to both interact with by message and to view my AI version of myself. I uploaded my blog link, and some files of documents I made, note summaries of books I read that were not on my blog. The program then went to sync the files to my profile and I closed it while it was doing so. The free version allowed up to 100 memories, and one AI persona. I’d highly recommend checking it out yourself.

Founder

Suman Kanuganti has quite the reputable background:

Education: BE in Engineering, MS in Robotics, MBA in entrepreneurship. Wow.

Intellectual property: ten patents in various emerging technologies. Double Wow.

Prestigious awards: SDBJ’s 40 under 40, Smithsonian’s Top Innovators, UCSD School of Management Influential Leaders, and featured on CNN, NY Times, CNBC, Forbes. Triple wow.

Founder is a 2-time startup founder, previous company founded in 2015 called Aira Tech which once raised $33.4m in venture capital funding over several rounds, the latest in Dec 27, 2018 for $17.2m in a Series B. The company had 100 employees, focused on AI and AR technology in support of the blind and visually impaired community. Altruistic in nature, the company was acquired in 2020 by Blue Diego Investments Group for an undisclosed amount. Since both companies were private, they didn’t need to disclose the amount. Given the raise of $33.4m, I’d guess the acquisition value to be at least $50m. Indeed, the enterprise value of Aira was $60m.

The founder reminds me of savant entrepreneurs that ended up changing the world. Satya Nadella, Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, etc. A picture, or in this case video, ends up being worth 1000 words. Take a look at his 2023 introduction of the MODEL-1 on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4gF7IyHtsCY&t=109s&ab_channel=PersonalAI

He does not seem like your average IT nerd that’s for sure. The vision described sounds iconic, transcendent even. He appears to fit the mold of a person who has already achieved the highest level of self-actualization, focusing entirely on a humanity shifting goal. It’s a lever that could move the entire world.

For bonus, the 2024 introduction of Model 2, this time in far greater detail, spanning an hour:

Personal AI MODEL-2, the fabric of true digital twin – YouTube

The team of founders with the other two in total have had a total of 4 successful exits totalling over $20 billion USD. My goodness, it appears the right team is in place.

Previous backers

Previously in 2020-2021, and again in 2022-2023, over $10 million was raised including a $8.4m seed round was led by Differential VC and Supernode global, with other investors including:

-Village global

-Good Friends

-Republic itself

-Powerhouse Capital

-BBGV

-BVC

-A16z, Andreessen Horowitz’s scout fund

-Keshif Ventures

At least we know that the professionals didn’t pass on the company; if none were invested, that may have negative implications, especially at a $30m valuation. It’s nice to have tier 1 VC firms backing the startup.

The advisory board is also impressive, including the likes of:

-Netflix

-Nvidia

-The New York Times

-Snap Inc

-IBM

-Qualcomm

-National AI Advisory Committee

If that weren’t enough, the technology partners:

-Nvidia

-Stability.ai

-AT&T

-Weights & Biases

-databricks

-UC San Diego Rady School of Management

-MIT

Personal AI has reputable investors, board members, and technology partners. The trifecta.

Future growth

Valuations in 2023 of potential comparable/competitors. Although they are each expanding in its own unique niche, they can be used as a potential reference point:

Open AI, which owns ChatGPT: $29 billion

Inflection: raised $1.3 billion at a $4 billion valuation

Hugging Face: raised $235 million in a Series D funding round at a $4.5 billion post money valuation

Lightricks: last raise in 2021 series C for $130 million at $1.8 billion valuation

Jasper: raise in 2022 Series A of $125 million at a $1.5 billion valuation

Stability.ai: raised $101 million in seed round in 2022 with a $1 billion valuation

AI21 labs: 2023 series C raise of $155 million at a $1.4 billion valuation

Descript: 2022 series C raise of $50 million at a $550 million valuation

Runway: 2023 series C extension raise of $141 million at a $1.5 billion valuation

Glean: 2023 series C raise of $100 million at a $1 billion valuation

Replit: 2023 series B extension raise of $97 million at a $1.16 billion valuation

On average, the majority of these AI companies have been around 2-7 years. How much could Personal AI potentially be worth? A lot.

Personal AI again was founded in 2020 so it’s been 4 years now. Even if it’s assumed the first 4 years was all research and development and use the conservative estimate of 7 years from here to get to the lowest valuation of $550m, that’s an 18.33x return from 30m to 550m in just 7 years. That’s a 51% compounded annual return. OK. Additionally, all the other AI companies on the list here are already at or over the $1 billion valuation and already unicorns. Even if acquired instead of trying to go for an IPO, those founders are making it rain.

Personal AI ended 2023 with 300k in ARR, and originally estimated it at 400k. The growth is estimated 13-20x for 2024. If we take the low end and conservative reduction by ~25%, that could be 10x revenue growth to ~$4m in 2024. Revenue estimates are for $10m in 2025. It’s currently in English only, with plans to roll out to all languages. Existing partnerships are being formed with Chinese companies and phone makers, with the goal to be able to get into China in ~12 months. Imagine the revenue growth once a giant population like China adopts. Add to that the social fabric for people’s obsession with themselves increasing, the interest in a personalized AI sounds remarkable.

Personal AI currently stores all the user’s personal data, but also gives the option of the private key to the user. This is possible as Large Language Models (LLM), which is the method for all the other AI companies, all have data in one aggregate pool. Personal AI is shooting for Personal Language Model (PLM), so every person has its own pod of private data. For those concerned about information privacy, that is reassuring.

I asked the founder himself, Suman via the republic board about whether there is a plan to incorporate auto recordings into the memory? The answer is as follows:

“yes and a few alternatives that’s our customers do. 1. Use native audio engines for quilc audio notes 2. Use meeting recording native transcriptions and summary service to push to a lounge or personal to review and add to memory or push to memory directly. 3. There is audio file supported in the current upload methods for transcribing. Given the native audio support across platforms, we intend to leverage that instead of building another live transcription component.”

With regards to marketing, Suman’s reply:

“Marketing plans are underway starting model-2 launch as we collaborate to announce our customers to the world, present PLM approach to groups on the hill, and ongoing partner distribution opportunities that are already established and ahead of us”.

Market

Personal AI has mentioned its goal is to have every person in the world using a personalize AI tool. The US total addressable market, TAM, alone stands at $400 billion. And that only refers to small business owners, executives, domain experts. That doesn’t even include the average person. Or the rest of the English-speaking world. Or the other developed nations. Since the internet is required to use, that includes 65% of the 8 billion people on the planet. Clearly the rest of the world is not nearly as wealthy as the US, so the opportunity in dollar value is not as high. But if you look at the remainder of the 5.3 billion people outside the US with internet, ~5 billion people, could the TAM opportunity be ~$600 billion?  So, the long-term market opportunity could be $1 trillion. Personal AI is going for the serviceable obtainable market with $1 billion estimated focused on just 2% of business owners, executives, and domain experts in the US only. That’s actually the more likely near-term realistic goal and result. If we do some sample calculations for the US market with Personal AI’s current pricing of $400 for an individual per year, and $10,000 per on the business level, if the 2% on the business side is hit, that’s already $1 billion annual recurring revenue, ARR. With approximately 258 million adults in the US in 2020, if instead of 2% we use 1% at $400 per person, that’s another ~$10m ARR. Depending on the valuation, the near-term valuation of the company if the SAM is achieved could be around a few billion.

Conclusion

When I first looked at the company and the YouTube videos available, my mind was blown and I had to review the information a couple times over a few days to attempt to understand what was going on. I’ve yet to encounter a startup on republic that I could invest in that has had that effect on me. Now that I have done so, I’m even more bullish than before. The internet was invented in 1983, and 40 years later, it has been a significant game changer in the way humans conduct our lives, with trillion-dollar companies emerging from it. AI is still in its infancy, imagine what AI is going to be like once it is widespread in its affect on life in 20-40 years from now when it has reached some level of maturity? Where could Personal AI be? In a best-case scenario, a $30 billion USD valuation is not out of the realm to suggest, a 1000x growth in 20-25 years with worldwide adoption of AI and by extension Personal AI. Open AI with ChatGPT has already reached this valuation.

Unfortunately, most individuals aren’t rich and are unable to drop buckets into said investment. Being that it is also a startup with 300k revenue at a valuation of 30m, it doesn’t make sense to go all in, with the risk being understandably high. But regret would be felt from knowing and not moving, or worse yet, putting a tiny drop in. By virtue of the Power Law, just 20% of our actions will account for 80% of our results. Charlie Munger has mentioned that in a person’s life, there are only a few opportunities that have a significant impact on life. Those opportunities must be taken and seized, but can only be recognized before the opportunity has arrived with awareness, wisdom, foresight, patience in waiting. Looking back at a person’s life at the end of the lives, some people achieve dramatically better results than they deserve, due to making a few astute decisions. The other AI companies previously mentioned cannot even be touched by the average joe investor; Personal AI is that company, from my four years in looking at and researching countless companies in this space. Investing in Personal AI is that outlier decision that could completely change your financial fortunes.

Disclaimer

This is not Financial Advice. This article is meant only for educational and perhaps entertainment purposes.

Disclosure

I/we have a beneficial long position in the shares of Personal AI either through SAFEs, stock ownership, options, or other derivatives. I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it from Personal AI. I have no business relationship with any company who is mentioned in this article.