Unique reports additional USD 4 million in seed funding and integration of GPT-3 in its platform

30.03.2023 09:51, Morgane Ghilardi

The startup announced the integration of Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service and GPT-3 in its AI-driven client intelligence platform as well as the extension of its seed funding, bringing it the total to USD 16 million. Unique was named one of the TOP 100 Swiss Startups in 2022.

Unique's co-founders, serial entrepreneurs Manuel Grenacher (CEO) and Andreas Hauri (CTO)

Founded in 2021 in Zurich by Swiss entrepreneurs Manuel Grenacher and Andreas Hauri, Unique is leveraging the power of state-of-the-art AI language models to automate repetitive tasks and deliver insights and assistance to client-facing teams in the financial service sector.

The startup has become one of the first European startups to integrate OpenAI's GPT-3 in its solution. Unique's report feature enables users to prompt GPT-3 and perform various tasks, including summarization, content creation, topic modeling, entity recognition, and information recognition; it can also generate high-level overviews before the next client meetings, executive summaries, follow-up emails, descriptions, and announcements. Unique's aim is to improve productivity and efficiency for financial services professionals.

"We are thrilled to be working together with Microsoft and to be able to integrate Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service for our clients in the finance and insurance industries," said CEO Manuel Grenacher. "This additional funding will allow us to continue to expand our services to even more clients."

Unique's co-founders have maintained a long and fruitful entrepreneurial partnership: after studying computer science, they launched the SaaS company Coresystems, a leading AI-based field service management cloud that was acquired by SAP, and the customer service marketplace Mila, which was a TOP 100 Swiss Startup in 2014 and 2015 and was acquired by Swisscom.

Andrew Reid, Global Partner Solutions Director for Microsoft Switzerland, said, "Through Unique's use of Azure OpenAI Service, our joint customers in the financial services industry now have access to the most advanced AI models in the world, enabling them to do more with less, improve experiences for end-users, and streamline operational efficiencies."

At the end of February, the startup reported that it had its first strategic advisory leader board meeting with Pictet and LGT, inviting the clients to explore the potential of OpenAI's language model and discuss upcoming features.


From left to right: Pascal Hauri (Unique), Claudio Mirti (Microsoft), Adam Goldberg (OpenAI), João Pedro Martins (Microsoft), Andreas Hauri (Unique), and Simon Gomez (LGT Private Banking)

Testimony from Unique client LGT underlines the potential and appeal of the platform. "LGT as a global private bank is committed to provide our clientele a personalized and tailor-made service," said Simon Gomez, Head Innovation Management at LGT Private Banking. "Together with Unique's ChatGPT-powered solution, we are evaluating promising use cases to reduce administrative work and consequently enable relationship managers to spend more time with their clients. These use cases include automation of CRM entries, support information gathering, writing meeting summaries, and much more."

Unique was named one of the TOP 100 Swiss Startups last year, as investors deemed it one the most promising Swiss ICT startups.