Citrusx Launches Stealth Mode AI to Enhance Explainability and Simplify Compliance for Enterprises

Citrusx: Simplifying AI Compliance for Businesses

Tel Aviv-based startup Citrusx has officially emerged from stealth mode, announcing a seed funding round of $4.5 million led by Canadian VC Awz, with participation from several angel investors.

Founded two years ago, Citrusx targets the AI sector with a key focus on explainability. Its end-to-end platform empowers business stakeholders to understand AI models, ensuring they meet performance expectations.

Enhancing AI Compliance and Understanding

As nations evaluate the implications of AI and pursue regulatory measures, Citrusx’s approach decentralizes AI understanding, making it accessible beyond technical teams. This ensures stakeholders can effectively manage both internal and regulatory compliance.

Today, AI is integral to modern business operations, optimizing processes, reducing costs, and enhancing customer experiences. However, deploying AI models involves various steps, including securing input and clearance from non-technical stakeholders, such as validation, risk, and legal teams. This knowledge gap often prolongs the approval process, leading to launch delays that can span six to nine months, ultimately impacting business outcomes.

Noa Srebrnik, who previously oversaw risk management at the Bank of Israel, recognized this challenge well before the recent surge in generative AI. In 2021, she founded Citrusx to develop a platform that facilitates AI validation and explainability, enabling all stakeholders to comprehend models efficiently while ensuring regulatory compliance.

A Comprehensive AI Lifecycle Solution

Citrusx's platform provides concise reports detailing model functionality, performance, and its potential to achieve business objectives. It encompasses the entire AI lifecycle—from development to production. In the development phase, it offers validation metrics for model stability and accuracy while identifying vulnerabilities that could affect fairness and compliance.

During the production phase, the platform continuously monitors models for drift, explains each new prediction, and periodically reports on potential risks and recommended mitigations.

“By providing one unified platform for an entire organization, Citrusx bridges the gap between complex ML models and all company stakeholders through validation, monitoring, and reporting,” said Srebrnik. “This streamlines deployment and maintenance, meeting regulatory requirements while demystifying model decisions for end customers.”

While in stealth mode, Citrusx began collaborating with select clients, including publicly traded firms in regulated sectors such as finance and security. Although specifics remain undisclosed, the company asserts that its patent-pending technology guarantees full transparency and accelerates the time to production by up to 82%. This capability significantly boosts the return on AI investments.

“Facilitating cross-department collaboration and managing diverse deployment models requires seamless communication, which Citrusx provides through real-time reports. These insights foster confidence and transparency between model developers and oversight teams,” noted a representative from a collaborating Canadian bank.

A Timely Solution Amidst AI Regulation

Globally, governments recognize AI's potential yet are equally mindful of its risks, leading to proactive regulation. Recently, U.S. President Biden issued an executive order to establish new standards for AI safety, while the EU unveiled a groundbreaking AI Act to ensure trustworthy AI development.

In this evolving landscape, tools like Citrusx will be invaluable for teams navigating regulatory frameworks while developing fair and robust AI. Other notable players in this domain include London-based LLM analytics startup Context, backed by Google Ventures, and California's Arize AI, which offers Phoenix, an open-source library for monitoring large language models (LLMs) for potential hallucinations.

With the market poised for growth, we anticipate an influx of new players addressing these critical needs in AI compliance and transparency.