Valencia-based Maisa, a startup developing a unique agentic AI system that offers a ‘Chain-of-Work’ (CoW) to trace and verify its outputs, has raised €4.7 million in a pre-seed funding round.
Led by NFX, the round saw participation from Village Global—backed by tech giants Mark Zuckerberg, Eric Schmidt, and Jeff Bezos—as well as Sequoia scout and DeepMind PM Lukas Haas.
David Villalón, CEO and Co-founder of Maisa, emphasised the significance of their innovation: “Our launch of the Vinci KPU is significant in the development of agentic AI for businesses and for developers of AI applications and automation solutions. This is the first time agentic AI becomes transparent and auditable, instead of the current ‘black box’ that obscures its outcomes and represents a huge risk for businesses. We are delighted to have gained the backing of such legends in global tech development and leaders of some of the largest firms in the world, not least for the recognition that their investment gives to the significance of what we are building.”
Founded in 2024 by David Villalón and Manuel Romero, Maisa has developed the Vinci Knowledge Processing Unit (KPU), “world’s first agentic AI system“. The Vinci KPU uses a unique CoW approach to ensure traceable, auditable, and deterministic outputs.
Unlike traditional AI systems, which rely on probabilistic ‘next-word’ prediction and often function as opaque ‘black boxes’, the Vinci KPU executes reasoning step by step using attributable data sources. This innovation eliminates hallucinations and introduces transparency, making AI viable for complex business-critical applications.
Maisa’s system is designed to autonomously pursue goals, make decisions, and adapt to dynamic environments while keeping humans in control.
Early adopters of the Vinci KPU include a global car manufacturer improving supply chain resilience, an international oil and gas firm managing evolving compliance requirements, and a European consumer credit institution optimising its loan approval processes under strict regulatory scrutiny.
According to Maisa, the technology has proven itself against industry benchmarks, ranking alongside OpenAI’s o1 model in graduate-level reasoning (GPQA) while outperforming leading large language models in coding (HumanEval), procedural adherence (ProcBench), and mathematical problem solving.
Maisa’s ability to provide full auditability is shaping it to be a cost-effective and scalable solution for automation.
Anna Piñol, investor at NFX, commented on Maisa’s transformative potential: “Maisa is going to be a major player in RPA 2.0 helping businesses across the world transform their core, business-critical functions through AI. It will allow them to work faster, more efficiently and achieve new and radical ways of operating. This launch will be seen as a pivotal moment in AI development this year and as AI’s coming of age in practical, business-enhancing use.”
Max Kilberg, investor at Village Global, added: “David and the Maisa team are building a transformative technology to turn AI agents into actual workers that are capable of reasoning through complex workflows. We’re super thrilled to be a part of their journey and are very excited to see the new benchmarks and enterprise traction.”
With offices in Valencia and San Francisco, Maisa is positioning itself as a rising name in agentic AI. The funding will be used to enhance the Vinci KPU’s capabilities and strengthen its go-to-market strategy, targeting sectors like financial services, supply chain, and research.
Read the orginal article: https://www.eu-startups.com/2024/12/the-prized-cow-maisa-raises-e4-7-million-to-develop-agentic-ai-system-vinci-knowledge-processing-unit/
