Kurvv closes $1M seed funding round for AI service designed for small businesses

Artificial intelligence is a big deal for the likes of Amazon, Microsoft and Google -- but what about a small business that can't afford to have a data scientist on staff? That's the niche that Bellevue, Wash.-based Kurvv plans to fill, with a service that takes a company's data and fits it into a pre-trained AI model that may not be perfect, but is good enough to address the problem that needs solving. "We're targeting companies that have data, but don't have the knowledge or the resources to hire data scientists and can't bring in a consultant," Kurvv's CEO, Ryan Lee, told GeekWire. Lee left his post as a data science program manager at Microsoft in May to focus on getting Kurvv off the ground, drawing upon more than 15 years of experience in product management. One of Lee's fellow co-founders is Vince Roche, who co-founded Boost Media, a San Francisco-based ad optimization venture, and now serves as Kurvv's chief technology officer.