Guickly Raises $4.2 Million to Monitor AI Use and ROI

San Jose, CA-based AI monitoring and evaluation platform Guickly has launched with $4.2 million in seed funding. The firm aims to help companies measure their use of AI and assess its benefits / ROI, in order to control and optimize spending.

Former Google AI applications lead Prashant Jalan founded the company, with AI experience from helping to develop the Google Maps speed limit feature, and building a profiler designed to optimize TPU performance. Guickly's independent measurement layer helps firms see who is using AI and where in their organisation, how much they are spending, and what return that spend is generating. Its coverage is designed to include 'shadow AI', operating outside formally approved technology systems.

The platform, which integrates with other workflow software, can then be used to establish spending budgets for each employee or AI tool, and identify areas of potential waste and overspend. Guickly says AI is establishing itself as 'a metered utility', as opposed to being used like most traditional enterprise software: this increases the need for firms to monitor in near real-time and control usage.

Funds came primarily from Engineering Capital, with participation from Converge VC, Neon Fund and a number of angel investors.

'Today, organizations are already spending as much on AI as they do on cloud infrastructure,' says Jalan, 'but unlike the cloud, they may have no idea where that money is going. When I was leading an Applied AI team at Google and making products for billions of people, I traced where every cycle and every byte was going. But I realized that even the largest tech companies didn't always know what AI was doing within their walls. So I resolved to fix that.'

The company is on the web at www.guickly.com .