Marc Benioff backs June to revolutionize AI

A Major Challenge for Large Enterprises

Integrating artificial intelligence (AI) tools reliably proves to be a significant challenge for large enterprises. This issue has led to the emergence of new specialized teams, known as forward-deployed engineers (FDE), who intervene to set up these complex systems. These experts have become essential for navigating the increasing complexity of AI deployments.

Efrat Rapoport, a former executive at Salesforce, emphasizes that the rise of AI has paradoxically increased the demand for professional services. Her new company, June, which has recently launched, offers a different approach. According to her, the industry has responded to the implementation of AI by hiring more people to manage these systems.

A Different Vision for AI

Rapoport, along with her co-founders Ohad Hen, Barak Goldstein, and Idan Tsitiat, envisions another method to make AI more accessible. To realize this vision, June successfully raised $20 million in a pre-seed funding round. This round was led by Time Ventures, Marc Benioff's investment firm, with support from tech luminaries such as Michael Dell, Aaron Levie, and George Kurtz. However, the company has not disclosed its current valuation.

The founders of June are no strangers to the world of AI. They previously launched Bonobo AI, a company specializing in language models, which offered a voice transcription service in 2017. This company was acquired by Salesforce two years later, and the team continued to work on Salesforce's AI initiatives before embarking on this new venture after observing the difficulties clients faced in integrating AI into their existing systems.

The Importance of Existing Systems

In the current context, where the fear of a "SaaSpocalypse" looms, software companies dread that AI might replace them. Yet, no AI model has yet been developed to replace a customer relationship management (CRM) system for a Fortune 500 company. AI models still need to be compatible with platforms such as Salesforce, ServiceNow, DataBricks, Workday, and other data management systems.

Rapoport explains that for AI to be truly beneficial, it is crucial to manage legacy systems. Companies must contend with fragmented data, complex workflows, and years of technical debt. Building an agent model is relatively simple, but getting it to work with existing systems is another matter. For example, how can an agent operate effectively when duplicate database fields exist and are used by different teams?

An Innovative Solution

June's platform stands out for its ability to analyze a company's existing systems to understand its business processes. It identifies bottlenecks and proposes optimized processes, powered by agents, to replace them. Teams are automatically notified through the company's internal communication channels.

Rapoport specifies that June provides a detailed roadmap for successfully implementing an agent in a typically complex enterprise environment. The tool guides users step by step, instructing them, for example, to remove duplicates or connect to a specific data source. Then, it’s just a matter of clicking "build" for June to start integrating these tasks into the organization.

A Concrete Success Story

Paul Akinmade, Chief Strategy Officer at CMG, a major American mortgage lender, quickly adopted June's platform. He had initially transferred his company's software engineering to Claude Code but faced difficulties integrating it with Salesforce. This issue was particularly pressing as he had promised at Salesforce's annual conference to return with 100 operational agents. His team spent weeks trying to overcome these obstacles without success until June stepped in.

Thanks to June, Akinmade's team was able to clearly identify where to deploy agents and do so safely, even before the official launch of the collaboration between the two companies. June thus enabled CMG to overcome the encountered obstacles and fulfill its commitments.

A Complementary Tool

Rapoport views June as a complement to FDEs and consultants. However, some clients might be drawn to the tool precisely because it allows them to avoid relying on these specialists. Akinmade, for example, expressed his desire to avoid FDEs, preferring a tool that is easy to use and understandable by all.

June seems to have succeeded in meeting this demand by offering a product that simplifies the deployment of AI in enterprises, thereby reducing dependence on specialized consultants.