Growth Engine company Silo.AI brings artificial intelligence to business use
Almost all sectors would benefit from using artificial intelligence (AI), but they lack the necessary internal competence. With the help of Growth Engine funding provided by Business Finland, the largest private AI laboratory in the Nordics, Silo.AI, is developing an ecosystem that will bring together both the demand and supply side of AI.
Silo.AI is developing a new platform aimed to make AI competence available to every company.
"In practice, we give more companies access to AI and build it into their business activity. We offer companies easier, more straightforward methods by which to apply AI in their business operations in a more cost-efficient and rapid manner than before," says Ville Hulkko, co-founder of Silo.AI.
Silo.AI is the largest Nordic AI supplier with a focus on AI solutions and AI services. The company offers scalable solutions that leverage machine learning, computer vision and natural language processing. With the help of a capital loan from Business Finland, Silo.AI will be able to expand its business operations into platform development and spread across Europe.
"In our operations, we continuously learn new lessons and understanding of the market needs. The Growth Engine loan provided by Business Finland will help us develop our operations based on the lessons learned," Hulkko explains.
AI EQUALLY BENEFICIAL TO LAW FIRMS AND TO HEAVY INDUSTRY
The Silo.AI organization consists of 50 top AI specialists, who make up the core of the company. The ecosystem being developed around the core enables serving an even more extensive and versatile clientele.
"We have helped the heavy industry and manufacturing industry, the automotive industry, as well as the financial and legal sector companies gain access to AI," Hulkko says.
Different sectors draw different benefits from AI, and many quite traditional-sounding sectors can also gain major benefits from applying AI. As an example, Hulkko mentions law firms.
"In law firms, a major part of the work is based on precedents and on finding them. The precedents are textual data, which is difficult to spot. With the help of an AI understanding language, suitable precedents can be found much more efficiently than before," Hulkko describes.
SILOED COMPETENCE THE PROBLEM IN EUROPE
The competition in the AI market is harsh. Today, not only majority of the Western end users but also all the major technology giants can be found in the United States. The Chinese, on the other hand, have limitless resources for developing AI.
There is a lot of AI competence in Europe as well: countries like Finland, France and the United Kingdom have succeeded in the AI market. The problem in Europe, however, is the siloed information: every country operates on its own.
"For example, the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) makes Europe a unique internal market where it is harder for outsiders to gain a foothold. There are also many AI startups in Europe, but we still lack flagship enterprises," Hulkko says.
However, thanks to our world-class AI competence, Finland has the potential to challenge the global AI business. Silo.AI intends to grow its business to billions of euros in Finland particularly through an ecosystem that combines the siloed operators.
"We can build an ecosystem in Finland that combines the various experts and export it all over Europe. Silo.AI is a facilitator, a centralized operator with in-depth understanding of the AI market. The objective is to build a European flagship into the AI market," Hulkko says.
Ville Hulkko presented Silo.AI at the Growth Engine event on 13 September 2019:
- See the video (YouTube, in Finnish)
- Read the presentation material (pdf)
Business Finland uses the name Growth Engine to describe cooperation networks − ecosystems − aimed at new business activities amounting to more than one billion euros. Growth Engines are implemented through an enterprise-driven partnership model between companies, research organizations and public actors, which strives to find solutions to global market disruption and create new growth sectors in Finland.
Read more about Growth Engines
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