初创公司Ollie表示，将在一周内关闭，其使命是提供一款尊重用户隐私的AI助手。联合创始人兼首席执行官Bill Lennon周五在X上发布消息称，该应用将于11月6日正式关闭。
Ollie, a startup whose mission was to deliver an AI assistant that respected its users’ privacy, says that it will be shutting down in a week. Bill Lennon, the company’s co-founder and CEO, took to X on Friday to deliver the news, noting that the app will officially shut down on November 6.
“我为我们所取得的成就感到非常自豪，”Lennon说。“我们用一个小团队打造了一款令人难以置信的个人助手，并学到了很多。我感谢我们出色的团队、用户、投资者，以及所有在这段旅程中支持我们的人。”过去一年，基于文本的AI助手市场迅速扩张，随着支撑此类应用的模型日益强大，它们在日常任务中的实用性显著增强。
“I’m really proud of what we accomplished,” Lennon said. “We built an incredible personal assistant with a small team, and learned a ton. I’m grateful to our amazing team, our users, our investors, and everyone who supported us on this journey.”The text-based AI assistant market has exploded over the past year, as the increasingly powerful models that undergird such applications have made them significantly more useful for daily tasks.
Ollie在9月向TechCrunch透露，由Khosla Ventures领投的种子轮融资金额为750万美元。该助手采用订阅制模式，专注于帮助家庭保持联系和有序。该应用连接用户的电子邮件和日历，同时提供预约预订、膳食规划和账单支付等集成功能。公司原本还计划最终进军家庭预算管理领域。
Ollie, which discussed its $7.5 million seed round led from Khosla Ventures with TechCrunch in September, offered a subscription-based model. The assistant was focused on helping families stay connected and organized. The app connected to a user’s email and calendar, while also providing integrated functions to help with appointment bookings, meal planning, and bill payments. The company had also planned to eventually move into household budgeting.
关键在于，Ollie是最早实现SOC 2合规的主流应用之一，SOC 2是企业可通过独立审计获得的隐私合规标准。遗憾的是，用户隐私在科技行业从来都不是一个高利润的领域。如果有什么不同的话，许多新的数字助手反而给用户带来了独特的隐私挑战——正如Instinct等公司所显示的那样。
Crucially, Ollie was one of the first mainstream apps that managed to achieve SOC 2, a privacy compliance standard that companies can attain via an independent audit. Unfortunately, user privacy has never been a hugely profitable aspect of the tech industry. If anything, many new digital assistants present unique privacy challenges for their users — as companies like Instinct have shown.
Lennon表示，蓬勃发展的AI行业的压力最终拖垮了公司。“我们曾接近成功，但最终无法跟上，”他补充道。“随着Muse、Instinct等竞争对手进入该领域，要脱颖而出、实现增长并筹集所需资金变得更加困难。”Lennon还表示，Ollie的客户将在未来几天收到关于如何导出数据和获得退款的说明。
Ultimately, the pressures of the burgeoning AI industry had taken its toll on the company, Lennon said. “We got close, but ultimately couldn’t keep up,” he added. “With Muse, Instinct, and others entering the space, it became harder to stand out, grow, and raise the capital we needed to succeed.”Ollie’s customers will receive instructions on how to export data and receive refunds in the coming days, Lennon added.