Основатель ServiceNow создал стартап StarLifter на базе ИИ для автоматизации корпоративных решений

ENCINITAS – Fred Luddy wants to put an end to useless meetings. The entrepreneur and ServiceNow founder and former CEO is building his newest venture, taking aim at a class of software called enterprise resource management systems, which businesses of all sizes use to centrally plan and manage manufacturing, supply chains, sales, accounting and a variety of other functions. “They produce massive amounts of data, but what happens with that data is people create dashboards,” Luddy said. “They have these god-awful meetings where they try to figure out why the dashboard looks a certain way, somebody’s dispatched to do an investigation, they have to look in two or three different systems, they have to come up with a supposition about why things are in a certain shape, and what can possibly be done about that.” These “human middleware” processes can’t be mitigated by more software, but Luddy believes artificial intelligence can provide a solution in its place. Luddy’s new startup, StarLifter, announced this summer that it raised $11.5 million in seed funding to build what the company calls the enterprise decision layer, with AI continuously monitoring multiple data sources to detect operational changes, determine their effects and help businesses make decisions faster. Effective Chief of Staff Large language models – the foundational datasets that support generative AI systems like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Claude – excel where software fails, according to Luddy, because software platforms remain static unless updated by their developers. “(Software) has to anticipate every move that’s ever going to happen by any human being,” he said. “And now, LLMs can do the same thing that we do as humans: it can reason, it can deal with ambiguity, it can do further research, it can look into multiple sources. “Any human being is very good at actually handling those kinds of situations,” he added. “Software isn’t; LLMs are.” When a company implements StarLifter, the system collects data from the operating semantics unique to each business, the way those details are linked together and documents that describe a business’ processes to determine how the business operates, its expected outcomes and unstructured data informing how things should operate. That data is then managed by an AI agent that works to reduce reactive decision making. Luddy compared the platform to an effective chief of staff. “If you hire a super smart chief of staff, you nonetheless have to educate that person on how you want things to work,” he said. “And in this era, that same education that you would convey either verbally or through memos or through a number of different pieces of unstructured data is exactly what we do inside an organization.” Human workers are also crucial to the implementation of StarLifter, Luddy said, because they provide context like how sales differ by geographic region and give the final approval before decisions are made based on the data that StarLifter ingests. Luddy also compared StarLifter to the contextual research people already conduct with AI in their business or personal lives before making a decision, and argued that he doesn’t see AI systems as a replacement for human workers any time soon. “I believe it’s going to be the biggest lever that humanity has ever seen, bigger than electricity in the 1890s,” he said. “But I think it’s also going to take longer to roll out than most people believe. The impact was going to be sudden, but now there’s going to be a long tail of productivity realization, especially in business.” $100B Addressable Market Luddy initially provided around $10 million in self-funding to launch the company and establish a proof of concept before searching for investors, which he said are vital for industry insights and connections just as much as they are for funding. StarLifter has already secured three clients and expects to secure three more by the end of the year in the banking, consumer packaged goods and light manufactured products industries to develop proof of the platform’s value. Once the company builds out its ideal customer profile, StarLifter plans to launch its go-to-market strategy and quickly scale up its staff. Luddy estimated StarLifter’s client base to between 20 and 40 companies by the end of 2027. “It’s probably a $100 billion total addressable market,” he said. “There’s room for many winners; we’d just like to be the biggest one.” StarLifter FOUNDED: 2025 CEO: Fred Luddy HEADQUARTERS: Encinitas BUSINESS: AI-based business orchestration platform EMPLOYEES: Six FUNDING: $11.5 million WEBSITE: starlifter.ai CONTACT: [email protected] NOTABLE: Luddy received the Horatio Alger Award from the Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans in 2023. Eli is an award-winning reporter primarily covering the tech and life sciences industries. He previously worked as the San Diego City Hall reporter for the regional wire City News Service. He has also covered public health, transportation and state and local politics in the San Francisco Bay Area for Local News Matters, the nonprofit arm of the regional wire Bay City News Service, where he also oversaw the development and daily content management of the outlet’s public health and COVID-19 news and resource webpage. He is also a contributing writer covering Minor League Baseball for the analysis and commentary website Baseball Prospectus. Eli is a graduate of San Francisco State University and a native of Northern California.