Sentient originally operated in stealth mode as Genetic Finance Holding Ltd. The company was founded in 2007 by Antoine Blondeau, Babak Hodjat and Adam Cheyer who created the natural language technology that led to Siri, Apple's voice recognition software.[6][7] Sentient raised a $2 million Series A round of funding, and $38 million in a Series B round led by Horizons Ventures.[6] Sentient emerged from stealth mode in November 2014 with $103.5 million in Series C funding.[6][3][8]
Sentient worked with Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory to analyze blood pressure to predict the likelihood of sepsis in ICU patients.[6][2] The technology was researched in association with Saint Michael's Hospital at the University of Toronto.[9] The platform was also used to successfully automate financial services for Sentient's subsidiary, Sentient Investment Management.[10]
In 2015, Sentient launched an AI powered visual intelligence and personalization platform leveraging deep learning and online learning. Shoes.com, a Vancouver-based online shoe retailer, was Sentient's first retail customer for this service.[9][11][12] Since its launch, Sentient had other retailer customers.[13][6][14]
Sentient Ascend was launched in September 2016 as a SaaS AI based conversion rate optimization platform, largely based on the same AI methods used in its financial technology IP.[15][16]
In 2019, Sentient Technologies was dissolved, selling off Sentient Ascend to Evolv and much of its AI intellectual property to Cognizant.[5]
