Data protection company Patented.ai today announced it has raised $4 million in a pre-seed funding round led by Cooley LLP and several angel investors.
On a mission to protect intellectual property from leaking to artificial intelligence, the San Francisco-based startup provides an on-device solution for data privacy and data loss prevention.
Called LLM Shield, the solution is meant to prevent the leakage of sensitive company data and personally identifiable information (PII) to large language models (LLMs).
The tool scans the device for the LLM’s input box text to filter PII, trade secrets, and other sensitive data before it can be intercepted, analyzed, or stored by LLMs. The solution also encrypts data to secure it while in transit or at rest.
LLM Shield, Patented.ai says, can be easily installed using existing endpoint management solutions and is compatible with both Windows and macOS. The company also offers a Chrome plugin to help Chrome Enterprise users deploy the protection on their devices.
Patented.ai will use the new investment to expand LLM Shield’s capabilities for the enterprise segment.
Today, the company also announced a personal version of LLM Shield, free for up to three devices, but with the same on-device data checks and protections as the enterprise version, to help individuals shield their personal information from LLMs.
“AI is revolutionizing productivity across industries, but there’s a silent crisis quietly threatening its potential. Data privacy and confidentiality are hanging by a thread,” says Patented.ai Founder Wayne Chang.
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