Imperial AI initiative I-X to collaborate with Fetch.ai on ‘new AI economy'

AI startup Fetch.ai has joined I-X Business Partners, the corporate membership programme of Imperial’s flagship initiative in artificial intelligence.

Fetch.ai, a Cambridge-based AI company founded in 2018, is offering a technology platform to help businesses create and deploy new AI applications. It will utilise the expertise of I-X's AI researchers and students to support its plans to create what it calls a “new AI economy”.

Fetch.ai's core product, DeltaV, fuses large language models with modular AI systems known as AI agents to create a marketplace that helps users connect more easily to services.

Through a chat interface, users will be able to instruct AI agents to carry out transactions such as booking flights or home cleaning services from whichever providers best meet their requirements. Businesses using the platform will have their own autonomous AI agents that perform tasks such as checking availability and accepting bookings.

Taken further, AI agents could be embedded into Internet of Things devices and autonomously perform complex tasks such as supply chain optimisation.

Academic collaboration

Sana Wajid, Programme Director at Fetch.ai said: “We are extremely pleased and excited to be partnering with Imperial College London's I-X Business Partners. In this age of fast paced innovation in AI, collaboration is key to success, where next wave of technology revolution will have the greatest impact on our lives. We are looking forward to collaborating with Imperial’s academics, who are experts in this area of AI, to accelerate the development and shape the future of AI agent-based technology."

Professor Sophia Yaliraki, Co-Director of I-X, said: “I’m delighted to welcome Fetch.ai as a new business partner of I-X. The partnership will make a valuable contribution to our mission at I-X, which is to bring Imperial’s academic expertise, student talent and convening power to bear on the most exciting challenges presented by the emerging AI revolution, in close collaborations with the innovative businesses who are helping lead it.”

I-X and Fetch.ai are presently scoping consultancy projects that will allow the company to access academics’ expertise to help address technical challenges. As part of the partnership, the company will also have access to the talent of Imperial students through activities such as hackathons and MSc projects. It will benefit from access to I-X's range of events and a shared community space that allow businesses to collocate with researchers and other businesses as part of an innovative community.

This article was first published on 27 November by Imperial College London.