Ario Raises $16 Million to Tackle Invisible Labor with AI
26 Junio 2024 - 10:00AM
Business Wire
Funding led by Floodgate will enable new data
connections to increase Ario’s level of assistance
Ario, the AI-powered assistant for parents, today announced $16
million in seed funding from top-tier investors including Wing
Venture Capital, Floodgate, Bain Capital Ventures, Moxxie, and
prominent angels.
This press release features multimedia. View
the full release here:
https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20240626701906/en/
(Graphic: Ario)
American parents spend hours per week managing their households,
from meal planning for the family to scheduling playdates for their
kids. Ario is on a mission to offload this invisible labor by
understanding the personal context of a task and then taking
intelligent actions to save parents precious time.
“Ario is building the AI personal assistant that real families
need; hyper personal, pro-active and focused on bringing real,
practical value to users,” said Floodgate founder Mike Maples.
“With this investment we’re excited to see how this world-class
team will unlock additional value for users, with more data
integrations enabling increasingly nuanced custom recommendations
and high-impact features laser-focused on freeing up parents’
time.”
Starting today, beta access is available to anyone. Ario takes
personalized, intelligent action because it allows users to connect
to the apps they use every day. If a user adds their Amazon,
DoorDash, Google Calendar, and/or X (Twitter) accounts, Ario builds
out a rich understanding of a user’s lifestyle, preferences, and
routines to provide more time savings.
Ario can:
- Add an entire school schedule to the user’s Google Calendar
from a single photo
- Identify schedule conflicts between a work meeting and a
child’s soccer practice, and suggest solutions
- Remind users when their Amazon return is due and create
personalized recommendations based on shopping habits
- Create a custom vacation itinerary, factoring in context like a
child’s nap windows and developmentally appropriate activities
- Provide personalized restaurant recommendations and meal
planning tips based on recent DoorDash orders
Critically, Ario takes a novel promise and approach to data;
Ario enables users to access their own data from other platforms in
minutes, and ensures users remain in full control when adding their
data. Unlike other tools that sell user data to third parties or
advertise on it, Ario helps users access their own data and
exercise true data portability. When users connect apps to their
Ario account, Ario does not claim ownership over that data.
Furthermore, users can access their own data from other platforms
in minutes, instead of completing the platforms’ own laborious
“data access” requests, which take days and several steps.
“For years, consumers have had to choose between product
functionality and maintaining data ownership,” said Sumit Agarwal,
CEO and cofounder of Ario. “Ario is built in a way that will
actually save people from the burden of life admin without
sacrificing control.”
Ario’s leadership team is composed of experts in data privacy,
cybersecurity and consumer products. Cofounder Sumit Agarwal was
previously cofounder at Shape Security (acquired by F5), which
protects B2C applications from automated fraud attacks, where Ario
cofounder Mengmeng Chen also held a leadership role. Ario recently
expanded its team with leaders from top consumer companies, such as
Netflix and Uber, as well as Amazon’s Alexa and Microsoft’s Copilot
and Turing teams.
Ario is currently available on iOS with Android coming soon. To
learn more about the company and product, visit heyario.com.
About Ario
Ario is an AI life assistant that takes care of mundane tasks,
giving time back to busy people. Ario connects with apps you use
every day like Google Calendar, Amazon and DoorDash to reduce time
spent on ongoing tasks like scheduling, anticipate needs for
one-off tasks like returning items to a store, and provide
personalized recommendations that reduce the amount of research
required for purchase and travel decisions. Ario is headquartered
in Palo Alto, California and is backed by leading investors such as
Floodgate, Wing Venture Capital, Bain Capital Ventures and Moxxie.
Learn more at heyario.com or download the iOS app.
View source
version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20240626701906/en/
JJ Ackles hello@heyario.com