Outread lands $750,000 to enhance academic research with AI

Welcome back to Neural Notes, a weekly column where I look at some of the most interesting AI news of the week. In this issue: AI-powered research and insights platform, Outread, closes an oversubscribed $750,000 pre-seed funding round.

Outread was founded in 2023 by siblings Janhvi and Dhruv Sirohi along with Anshika Singh. The round was backed by Techstars, with 70% of the funding coming from Google and AWS executives such as Jeff Dean and Fiona Bones. Outread isn’t just ChatGPT, but for academic researchers, it aims to streamline the process professionals use to access and digest academic research.

Utilising AI, the platform provides summaries of extensive academic papers, simplifying the challenge of keeping up with the latest developments across various fields.

“With Outread, users gain immediate access to the latest ideas and science without depending on secondary sources like news outlets,” Anshika Singh, co-founder and CPO, said exclusively to SmartCompany.

“Our double-pronged approach lets you decide if you want Outread to discover for you or summarise something you discovered yourself giving you full control of how you want to consume complex research papers.”

According to Outread, it’s addressing the overwhelming volume of over 5 million research papers published annually, which often makes it difficult, and expensive, for individuals to efficiently find information.

Outread’s platform can be integrated into existing company workflows, providing support for a variety of professional tasks. It helps enhance research and advisory efforts by incorporating third-party research, assists in generating proposals, and enriches case studies with substantiated data. Additionally, the platform aids in establishing a common baseline of knowledge among teams, drawing from the latest in academic research and analysis.

It offers a subscription model that provides unlimited access to summaries of significant research papers for $20 per month.

“Our focus is on the professional services segment. But compared to the exorbitant prices of journals where they charge $40-50 per article, the $20 per month subscription on Outread allows unlimited access to research summaries, which is more affordable,” Outread CEO, Janhvi Sirohi, said.

According to Singh, Outread integrates its language models with a live stream of updated research data, which is a less power-intensive alternative to continuously retraining machine learning models.

But there are other AI platforms that are closing the gap when it comes to delivering more current information. when it comes to standing out in a crowded market, Singh pointed to Outread’s unique dual approach:

“Unlike our competitors, Outread isn’t just an upload-and-get-summary platform, but that is a part of what we offer,” Singh said.

“Our main distinguisher is that we provide summaries of the top latest summaries so that enterprises and professionals do not have to go out looking for access to research papers themselves.”

How Outread deals with copyright and sensitive data

Addressing potential concerns about AI accuracy and the handling of sensitive data, CTO Dhruv Sirohi explained that the platform employs a “retrieval augmented generation” to ensure the AI has access to the most current research.

“What makes Outread unique is that it doesn’t just make content out of nothing but actually takes information from large research databases that other GenAI models do not have access to and provides summaries of the latest and most influential research papers,” Sirohi said.

“We also implement factored verification which is a multi-agent method that allows one model to critique the output produced by a second model to continually improve the accuracy of the information produced.”

As we know from various court cases involving authors and big tech companies training large language models, copyright is a considerable concern for authors.

Given academic research can often contain proprietary information and data, this has also been a point of consideration for Outread.

“We connect to existing research databases to provide updated and latest summaries,” Sirohi said.

“In the case where users are uploading research papers to our platform, we ensure that these papers are not shared publicly through access management – only the summaries are available to our customers which complies with copyright laws.”

Interestingly, despite Outread’s focus on research papers, academic institutions don’t currently make up Outread’s customer base.

“We don’t sell to academic institutions yet. Companies that are looking to innovate quickly such as the Big4 and tech companies like Google are our customers,” Janhvi Sirohi said said.

“These companies are quick to adopt and invest in new technologies to stay on the cutting-edge. However, we are exploring strategies to encourage adoption among academic institutions in the future.”

Other AI news this week

Employment Hero debuts SmartMatch amid concerns over AI and recruitment bias
Meta’s share price dropped 15% overnight after announcing that it spent more than expected on AI
ChatGPT rival Perplexity AI is heating up, chasing US$250 million in extra funding at a US$2.5-$3 billion valuation. This follows a US$63 million raise at a US$1 billion valuation in March. This is one to watch for sure.
Nvidia is reportedly acquiring Israeli GPU management provider, Run:ai.

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