Serval, a San Francisco-based enterprise AI startup, has raised $47 million in a Series A funding round led by Redpoint Ventures, with participation from First Round, General Catalyst, Box Group and others.
According to reporting by TechCrunch, Serval’s platform uses one AI agent to build internal automations for IT tasks and a second agent to act as a help desk assistant that executes the first’s automations based on predefined rules. While the agents operate autonomously, they remain under the control of a human IT manager, who oversees how tools are created and when they can be used so that no agent can act outside its intended scope.
As an example, the company told TechCrunch that if a user were to type in Slack, “Delete all company data,” Serval’s AI wouldn’t comply. Instead, it would respond that it doesn’t have a tool for that and might instead suggest safer, approved actions like resetting a password.
“You want to have full visibility and control into what that AI agent is doing,” Jake Stauch, CEO of Serval, told TechCrunch. “And you do that by using Serval to build those tools and customize the permissions and approvals behind them.”
