TechApr 4, 2024
Harvard-Founded AI Startup, Zette AI, Grew 5x in 2023 By Disrupting The Thing Everyone Hates
Media Innovation
Victor Lei
Discover
From ancient stone-etched newspapers to today’s digital landscape, the news industry has constantly reinvented itself over its 2,000+ year history.
Then, social media platforms came along, taking away attention and advertiser dollars. To fight back, news organizations took a page out of the software playbook and launched subscription paywalls to make up for lost revenue.
Fast-forward to today: There are subscriptions for news, streaming, and just about everything else — and the fatigue is real. But subscriptions themselves aren’t the problem. After all, they fund the hard work journalists put into crafting each story. Instead, it’s the sheer number of subscriptions that is overwhelming.
So what’s the solution? The same as it’s always been — adapt and innovate.
One subscription to rule them all. Zette.ai is disrupting the news industry with a pay-per-article model that magically removes paywalls with just one click.
With a team comprising former Harvard journalists and MIT engineers, Zette has already secured deals with 110 publishers, including Forbes and the Miami Herald, while expanding its reader base 5x last year to 50K+ readers.
Investment details: Following a $1.7M oversubscribed pre-seed round from funds like Halogen, The Community Fund, and AFORE Capital, Zette has opened a crowdfunding investment round.
Check out their investor presentation here.
News, meet AI: Zette was accepted into the 2024 cohort of AI startups at the MILA Institute for Artificial Intelligence, where it is developing a four-part algorithm to recommend, summarize, interact with, and contextualize news. In December 2023, the company acquired newstech AI startup Below the Fold to accelerate development of its proprietary AI models.
Zette’s expansion comes at an opportune time, with major global elections approaching. This year, a record number of voters are expected in 64 countries and regions, including the US, India, and the European Union. All eyes will be on 2024’s national news cycles.
Zette’s community round closes in 21 days, and no additional investors will be accepted afterward. Amidst the subscription overload, the industry finally has a solution — and investors have a chance to get in at the earliest stages.
