Julius AI, a startup that positions itself as an AI data analyst, has secured a $10 million seed round led by Bessemer Venture Partners. The funding round also saw participation from Horizon VC, 8VC, Y Combinator, and the AI Grant accelerator, along with several prominent angel investors such as Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas, Vercel CEO Guillermo Rauch, and Twilio co-founder Jeff Lawson.
Founded by Rahul Sonwalkar after his graduation from Y Combinator in 2022, Julius emerged from a pivot away from his previous logistics startup. The platform functions as a data scientist, analyzing and visualizing large datasets while performing predictive modeling based on natural language prompts. Despite similarities to tools like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini, Julius has established a distinct niche, boasting over two million users and generating more than 10 million visualizations.
Sonwalkar describes Julius as an intuitive tool that allows users to interact with it conversationally. “You can talk to the AI like you would talk to an analyst on your team, and the AI will run the code and perform the analysis for you,” he explained in an interview with TechCrunch. For example, users can ask Julius to visualize correlations between revenue and net income across different industries in China versus the U.S.
The platform’s specialization in data science even attracted the attention of Harvard Business School professor Iavor Bojinov, who collaborated with Sonwalkar to adapt Julius for HBS’s new required course, Data Science and AI for Leaders.
Reflecting on the challenges of building a product in a competitive space, Sonwalkar noted, “People told us you’re not going to succeed. What we found was that being focused on a use case is really important.”
Beyond his entrepreneurial pursuits, Sonwalkar gained brief notoriety for a viral prank following Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter. Posing as a laid-off employee named “Rahul Ligma,” he staged a humorous stunt outside Twitter’s headquarters. However, Sonwalkar emphasizes that his startup has since overshadowed the prank. “I don’t think many people know me for that anymore,” he said. “I get recognized for Julius a lot more now.”