The goal of Liner’s tool, which was introduced last year, is to provide a more dependable artificial intelligence service than general-purpose ones like ChatGPT from OpenAI.
As it expands its business in specialised information retrieval, Liner, an AI search engine for academics and students, has secured $29 million from investors such as Samsung Venture, Atinum Investment, and Intervest.
With 10 million users spanning campuses including UC Berkeley, Texas A&M, and the University of Southern California, the US is the largest and fastest-growing market for the Seoul-based AI business. In an interview, creator and CEO Luke Jinu Kim stated that around two-thirds of its paying customers are in the US, with the great majority being in higher education.
Launched last year, Liner’s tool seeks to be a more dependable Artificial Intelligence (AI) service than general-purpose ones such as Perplexity’s bots and OpenAI’s ChatGPT. The business has access to a library of scientific journals and publications, and it limits its search to reliable sources like government databases and scholarly articles.
This kind of search engine is new. Only useful information is there, according to Kim, 33. The instrument is applicable to a wide range of academic fields, including engineering, history, medicine, and the humanities.
It adapts huge language models to assess the reliability of information using generative AI, the same technology that assisted in creating chatbots like ChatGPT and Google Gemini from Alphabet Inc. Students might pose challenging questions such as “How do you calculate the heat loss through a wall with a material’s thermal conductivity, thickness, and temperature difference?” or “What are the key literary devices in Hamlet’s “to be or not to be” soliloquy and what is their significance?”
When Kim and Chanmin Woo were undergraduates, they founded the company more than 10 years ago by developing a browser plugin that would only display relevant search results. “They seized the chance to develop a more disciplined chatbot that wouldn’t experience hallucinations when ChatGPT was released in late 2022,” Kim added.
According to the business, LB Investment is one of the investors in the Series B round, along with current backers SL Investment and Capstone Partners. It has so far funded $33 million, and is expanding its worldwide team of about 40 employees by adding more jobs in San Francisco.
Liner’s main and fastest-growing market is the US, where 10 million people have already signed up. With the great majority of Liner’s paying customers being in higher education, universities including UC Berkeley, Texas A&M, and the University of Southern California are important service hubs. The popularity of the site in American academics is reflected in the fact that almost two-thirds of these users are based in the US.
The AI search engine markets itself as a more accurate and dependable substitute for all-purpose bots such as Perplexity and ChatGPT. Like ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini, it makes use of generative AI technology, but its main goal is to enhance the quality of information by sifting through reliable sources. Because of this methodology, it is especially helpful for scholarly research, where information veracity is crucial.
Students/Learners may ask sophisticated, specific questions with Liner’s tool, including evaluating important literary methods in Shakespeare’s *Hamlet* or figuring out heat loss in engineering difficulties. Liner prevents “hallucinations,” a problem that can occur when AI produces inaccurate or misleading information, by tailoring huge language models to highlight reliable sources.
The constraints of more generic AI models have prompted this focused approach, which provides an academic answer for people in need of reliable, precise information.
When Kim and co-founder Chanmin Woo were undergraduates at universities more than ten years ago, the firm got its start. Initially, they developed a browser plugin that emphasized pertinent search results. Their decision to create a more specialized AI chatbot that might solve the accuracy issues with more general AI models was spurred by the launch of ChatGPT in late 2022.
So far, Liner has raised $33 million in the Series B funding round. In addition to current sponsors like Capstone Partners and SL Investment, LB Investment is one of the investors from this round.
With the additional funds, the firm intends to increase the number of its around 40 employees worldwide. In an effort to increase its market share in the United States, Liner is now searching for new roles in San Francisco.
In addition to contesting the more general AI field dominated by less accurate tools, Liner is establishing itself as a vital resource for academics and students in need of precise and specialized information by providing a dependable AI tool that concentrates on high-quality, academic sources.