Swedish AI startup Sana experienced a surge of interest last January. Based in Stockholm, the growing team faced challenges in managing calls and meetings with corporate clients, including the German pharmaceutical giant Merck, trading platform Robinhood, and the Swedish appliance manufacturer Electrolux. These corporates were interested in Sana's AI tools designed to interpret complex internal databases and systems such as Salesforce. While these high-profile accounts presented great opportunities, the lengthy onboarding process made it difficult to pursue new clients. This prompted founder Joel Hellermark to rethink their strategy. Hellermark proposed launching a free version of the AI agent that could draft emails, generate meeting minutes, and fill out simple forms—services previously offered to enterprise clients. Six months after introducing this free tier, around 100, 000 additional workplaces have signed up, with teams of over five members paying $30 per user per month. Sana has recently secured $55 million at a valuation of $500 million to enhance its research capabilities and support its commercial growth in the United States. "For the next billion AI users, we needed a fundamentally different user interface, " Hellermark explained to Forbes. "The main obstacle for companies is their necessity to either collaborate with Microsoft, which can be quite cumbersome, or develop AI assistants from scratch. " The funding round led by the venture capital firm NEA, while modest compared to the recent large sums raised by AI companies like OpenAI and Anthropic, brings Sana's total funding to over $130 million, positioning it as one of Europe's most well-capitalized AI startups. "There's limitless demand, " Hellermark remarked. "Never has there been such a clear route to the vast opportunities within enterprise software. " Hellermark, a Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree, established the company in 2016 with the vision of leveraging AI to create tailored workplace training programs.

The current focus is to integrate this technology with internal databases and a wide array of business applications to simplify repetitive tasks for office personnel, such as updating Salesforce entries. This positioning puts Sana in competition not only with Microsoft's Copilot and the enterprise search startup Glean but also with well-financed startups like Harvey, Hebbia, and Co:Helm, which specialize in automating tedious tasks for lawyers, financial analysts, and medical professionals respectively. Hellermark’s AI aims to seamlessly connect various software tools, from Slack to SharePoint to Salesforce. “Our clients express a desire for a single solution that can integrate and curate their data for diverse applications, ” he says. Sana's technology can integrate with any large language model utilized by a company and employs Retrieval-Augmented Generation, a method that customizes AI agents using the client’s internal data. “While there will be many niche players, we aim to become the user interface layer for AI, ” he states. The latest funding round led by NEA has doubled Sana's valuation since its previous investment round in May 2023. The company currently generates over $20 million in annual recurring revenue, though it has not yet reached breakeven, according to insiders. “When we first invested, Sana was on a solid growth trajectory, but now we’re witnessing a significant inflection point, ” remarked Scott Sandell, executive chairman of NEA. “I firmly believe that offering something for free is one of the most powerful business strategies…it lays the groundwork for future monetization. " Sana has also made strategic acquisitions, including the September purchase of Tel Aviv-based AI startup CTRL, a deal that had not been disclosed. Additionally, in July, it appointed former Google and Inceptive AI researcher Oscar Täckström as chief scientist and brought on former Apple designer Eric Olmers. “We aim to infuse the Scandinavian design philosophy into helping organizations scale from five internal AI applications to thousands, ” Hellermark concludes.