Most AI companies talk about “scale.” Bigger models. Louder claims. Same results. But AUI (Augmented Intelligence Inc.) just reminded the industry that the future of intelligence isn’t louder, it’s smarter. On Nov 3, 2025, the NYC-based startup raised $20M in a SAFE round at a $750M valuation cap. That’s confidence money, poured into Apollo-1, the world’s 1st neuro-symbolic foundation model for task-oriented conversational AI. While everyone else is still teaching chatbots to sound clever, AUI is teaching them to think.
Founded in 2017 by Ohad Elhelo and Ori Cohen, AUI isn’t your typical AI garage story. Ohad Elhelo, Co-Founder & CEO, built his playbook on both intellect and impact, Brandeis-trained in Econ & Finance, Forbes 30 Under 30 in Israel & the U.S., founder of Our Generation Speaks, and a former Combat Intelligence Officer in the IDF Special Forces. Ori Cohen, Co-Founder & Chief Product Officer, brings deep scientific precision, Ph.D. in Physics from Imperial College London, postdoc at Univ. of Groningen, and product leadership experience at Guesty. Together, they’ve built an architecture that merges neural intuition with symbolic logic, the brain meets the rulebook.
Apollo-1 isn’t another transformer trying to guess its way through a conversation. It blends the fluency of generative AI with the reliability of symbolic reasoning, so it doesn’t just chat, it executes. In benchmark airline booking tasks, Apollo-1 hit >90% success where transformer-based models like Claude stalled near 60%. It delivers deterministic, explainable outcomes that enterprises can audit, trust, and deploy. That’s the difference between AI that entertains and AI that performs.
The $20M round came together fast, 1 week flat. eGateway Ventures led, joined by investors from New Era Capital Partners under Gideon Argov, plus AUI’s powerhouse circle of strategic backers: Jim Whitehurst (ex-IBM President & Red Hat CEO), Joshua Boger (Vertex Pharma founder), Aron Ain (Chairman of UKG), Bradley Bloom (Berkshire Partners co-founder), and Dadi Perlmutter (former Intel EVP & Technion Council Chair). It’s a lineup that doesn’t chase hype, they invest in precision.
AUI’s Google Cloud partnership, announced in 2024, set the runway. Apollo-1 runs natively on Vertex AI, integrates with BigQuery, and soon drops on Google Cloud Marketplace, letting companies deploy enterprise-grade agents in hours, not months. From Brooklyn to Tel Aviv to Ramallah, AUI’s 45-person team is scaling toward general availability in Fall 2025.
$20M isn’t noise, it’s signal. Apollo-1 isn’t another LLM chasing applause; it’s the model teaching machines to reason. In a market obsessed with conversation, AUI just gave AI a mind of its own.
