Cognita.ai raises 15M to fix enterprise AI’s biggest bottleneck : deployment

Cognita.ai, a Chicago-based artificial-intelligence company, raised $15 million for Series A funding. The money will help enterprises move from AI pilots to production solutions that have measurable business impact. The funding round was led Nexus Venture Partners

This investment comes at a crucial time when enterprises struggle with transforming AI experiments into operational solutions. Cognita.ai reports that 87% of companies are investing in AI but only 20% have successfully deployed solutions into production. In an exclusive interview with VentureBeat, Feroze Mohammed (founder and CEO of Cognita.ai) said that “Enterprise AI has reached a tipping point.” “The biggest challenge enterprises face isn’t just building AI models – it’s getting them working in production.”

How Zuno platform reduces AI implementation time from 8 to 12 weeks

Mohammed who previously led Hitachi Vantara (19459049) as COO identified three major obstacles to enterprise AI adoption. These were data readiness, integration issues with existing business processes and lack of AI knowledge within organizations.

Cognita.ai developed Zuno to address these challenges. It includes accelerators for intelligent document processing and advanced graph-based solution. The company claims that its approach reduces the typical AI implementation time from 6-8 months down to 10-12 week.

In an interview with VentureBeat, Anup Gupta said, “Most conventional methods require long lead time for consulting projects and a lot change management, with long timelines, and long upfront investment.” “Cognita was one of the first businesses we came across that could talk about demonstrable uses cases across different industries.”

This company has already deployed its solutions at more than 30 enterprises. Cognita.ai, in one case, helped a major garage-door manufacturer reduce the time it took to create a catalog from six months to just a few weeks by using generative AI. The solution allows the manufacturer create virtual door designs, render them in various settings and allow rapid testing with dealers.

Other implementations have included a 70% increase in invoice processing speed, and a 1% reduction in customer churn. These metrics translate into significant revenue impact for large businesses.

The future of enterprise-level software: AI is rewriting every stack

Funding will be used to support three primary initiatives, including market expansion, intellectual properties development, and capability building. Mohammed sees Cognita.ai as “the practical AI for the enterprise” in five years.

Gupta said that “every software stack is being rewritten using AI.” In the next few years every enterprise workflow will use a lot more AI that is currently being used.

The investment reflects an broader trend within enterprise AI where the focus is shifting away from experimental projects and towards practical implementations which deliver a clear return on investment. Cognita.ai, which builds solutions that integrate into existing workflows, is a particularly timely approach for businesses looking to operationalize AI and maintain existing systems.

To meet the growing enterprise demand, Cognita.ai plans to expand its AI library, advance Zuno, and grow their implementation teams. Cognita.ai has offices in Chicago, Silicon Valley and Hyderabad. They serve clients from the manufacturing, healthcare and finance sectors.

According to industry analysts, this funding round may signal a new phase of enterprise AI adoption where practical implementation and measurable results take precedence over experiment pilots. As organizations continue to struggle with AI integration, solutions that demonstrate concrete business impact within existing systems could find increasing traction on the market.