Any change in large corporations can take weeks. Conduct wants to solve this with AI, convinces SAP and gets 60 million.
Three former Palantir employees want to solve one of companies’ biggest problems: software that has become so complex that any change takes forever. They have now raised $60 million with their Startup Conduct.
The Series A financing round is led by Index Ventures and Iconiq. The German software company SAP is also participating in the round. Other investors include Creandum, Lucid Capital and Booom.
SAP doesn’t just invest money
For SAP, this is about more than just a financial investment: the Walldorf-based company is also entering into a strategic partnership with Conduct. As a reminder: SAP produces programs that can be used to record business processes. Especially in corporations with software landscapes that have grown over decades, even small adjustments can take a long time because processes and programs are closely linked to one another. Now the three founders come into play.
Conduct promises to drastically reduce this effort using AI. Business decisions should be translated into technical changes more quickly, without developers having to spend weeks working through complex systems such as SAP or Salesforce.
What do you learn at Palantir?
Behind Conduct are the Germans Jan Philipp “JP” Haas and Philipp Höfer as well as the Brit Henry Thompson. All three previously worked at one of the most mysterious software companies of our time: Palantir with CEO Alex Karp.
Haas was manager for the DACH region, Höfer for the AI platform strategy and Thompson in a more technical role for the Japanese market.
At Palantir, the founders experienced firsthand how difficult it is for large organizations to change complex software, says Haas in an interview with Gründerszene. An important learning from there: “Recognize the chaos of the world,” says Haas. “Companies are inherently complex. We bring clarity and control to this chaos.”
The number of employees is to be tripled
It’s not about “ripping out the old software and replacing it with AI. We use AI to minimize maintenance and complexity.” Proximity to the customer is also crucial. It is true that a customized product is not built for each of them, as is the case with Palantir. But: “The big breakthrough was partnerships with BCG or NTT Data.” Further collaborations are coming soon.
With the fresh capital, the team is expected to almost triple in size from the current 35 to more than 100 employees within the next six months. People are currently being sought for the human resources department. Product designers and roles in business development are also advertised (full-time, on-site). In addition to its headquarters in London, Conduct is also opening a location in New York.
