Cascade AI is a Seattle-based startup that is utilizing artificial intelligence to help employees find answers to HR-related questions. The company recently announced a $3.75 million seed round led by Gradient, Google’s AI-focused early stage venture fund. Cascade has developed an AI assistant that can answer questions related to benefits, bonuses, leave, retirement, internal conflicts, return to work policies, and more. The bot is trained on a company’s HR policies and is able to automate over 50% of HR support operations for its customers.
According to Ana-Maria Constantin, the CEO and co-founder of Cascade, the AI assistant can act as a “first line of defense” for employees, especially when it comes to confidential questions that employees may not be comfortable asking HR colleagues. The assistant is able to tailor answers based on job title or location of the employee. If the assistant is unable to access relevant information, the system will escalate requests. Companies are not able to see employee-specific queries, but they can access aggregate data to highlight HR trends within a workforce.
Cascade generates revenue through a per-employee-per-month pricing structure and is currently working with organizations that have more than 1,000 employees in industries such as tech, energy, and healthcare. The company was previously known as Cascade Health, which aimed to provide transparency in healthcare pricing information. However, after realizing substantial quality issues with publicly available health transparency data, the company pivoted to focusing on HR-related issues after hearing from HR teams about complexities with benefits information.
Cascade is exploring ways to enhance the AI assistant so that it can perform tasks for users in addition to answering questions. The company’s co-founders, Constantin and Pulak Goyal, both attended Harvard and worked at Microsoft before launching Cascade. Constantin, who holds degrees in computer science and astrophysics, was recognized as Young Entrepreneur of the Year at last year’s GeekWire Awards. While revenue metrics were not shared, the company has previously raised $1.75 million in a pre-seed round. With its innovative use of AI technology, Cascade AI is helping to streamline HR support operations for companies while providing employees with quick and personalized answers to their HR-related queries.
