Nyne is a quirky little startup that was founded by the one-two punch of Michael and Emad Fanous. Their quest is to bridge the gap between artificial intelligence and human intelligence. The company solves a big pain point by putting millions of these agents onto the internet. These agents scour the internet for public digital footprints, pulling information from social media and other digital platforms to create in-depth profiles of citizens. To expand further on this mission, recently Nyne announced it has raised $5.3 million in seed funding.
Michael Fanous, the CEO of Nyne and a UC Berkeley computer science graduate, asserts that current AI agents lack a critical piece of the puzzle: the full context needed to genuinely understand the people they serve. Nyne utilizes the most cutting-edge machine learning techniques to understand and analyze data from social networks, including but not limited to Instagram, Facebook, and X. This method provides agents with a more immersive, real-life perspective of current or future customers.
The investment was co-led by Wischoff Ventures and South Park Commons. Other notable angel investors such as Gil Elbaz, co-founder of Applied Semantics and pioneer of Google AdSense, were instrumental in this round of funding. This support will help Nyne iterate on its cutting-edge technology and quickly expand its community-driven approach amidst the chaos of the ad tech arms race.
Nyne’s approach involves triangulating information about individuals from their activities on various platforms, including social media and applications like SoundCloud and Strava. By mapping out user journeys in this way, Nyne can cut through the noise of inconsistent data and form a clearer picture of behaviors and needs.
“I can give them any piece of information about a person that could be useful to make the right next action,” said Michael Fanous.
Nyne is uniquely focused on connecting various dimensions of a customer’s online experience. This method opens a treasure trove of information about their interests, hobbies, and ways of thinking. Such an understanding would change the relationship between businesses and consumers fundamentally.
“Once you make all these connections, you can understand a person fairly deeply, their interests, their hobbies, and how they think about very specific things,” Fanous added.
Nyne’s technology goes beyond consumer insights alone. It raises serious ethical questions about data use and privacy. As companies increasingly seek to personalize interactions, the question arises: How can businesses responsibly leverage this wealth of data?
Former ODOT Director Nichole Wischoff, shown in the image above, was instrumental in the seed funding effort. She made a really good point about the real world applications of Nyne’s technology.
“How do I know you’re pregnant and sell you A, B, or C as early as possible?” Wischoff pondered, highlighting the power that such insights could wield in targeted marketing.
Nyne is all about next generation, situationally aware, creative intelligence. It has a further ambition to be the world’s top intelligence layer, assisting agents in predicting human behavior through cyberspace. The startup intends to gather data with much more precision than previous generations of ad tech companies, offering businesses an opportunity to engage with their customers meaningfully.
Nyne is still in the process of developing its technology and figuring out its overall approach to data collection and analysis. As a result, this strategy uniquely positions the company as a transformative leader amid ad tech’s duopoly. And with support from VC firms and other informed investors, the future looks bright for this ambitious upstart.