AI startup Rhythms emerges from stealth with $26 million in funding to transform the future of work

Rhythms, a new AI startup founded by Vetri Vellore who previously sold his company to Microsoft, has emerged from stealth mode with $26 million in seed funding. The round was co-led by Greenoaks and Madrona with participation from Accel, and Cercano (formerly Vulcan).

Headquartered in Seattle, Rhythms aims to enhance organizational productivity by leveraging AI to identify the working patterns of high-performing teams. With a current team of five spread across Seattle and India, the startup plans to use the fresh capital infusion to expand its workforce and unveil a product preview later this year.

While Rhythms currently has no paying customers, the startup aims to target companies of varying sizes and across diverse industries.

The core of Rhythms’ offering lies in developing a platform that integrates with different systems within a company. Leveraging recent advancements in AI, including large language models, the platform analyzes a company’s “rhythms” — encompassing habits and patterns like monthly business reviews, quarterly retrospectives, and weekly cross-functional meetings.

Rhythms was co-founded by Vetri Vellore and Venky Veeraraghavan. The ultimate goal is to unravel the reasons behind varying team performances within the same organization and provide recommendations to enhance productivity. These insights are derived from both internal processes and the best practices observed in other successful companies.

Before venturing into Rhythms, Vellore had his roots firmly planted in the startup world. He was the brains behind Ally.io, a sales performance management platform that caught Microsoft’s eye and was acquired in 2021. Ally.io specializes in assisting businesses in keeping tabs on their Objectives and Key Results (OKR), a popular framework for team and organizational management. Over the past few years, Vellore has been playing a crucial role at Microsoft, holding the position of corporate vice president in the tech giant’s headquarters in Redmond.

“We are thrilled to launch Rhythms and pioneer a first-of-its-kind AI software solution that will revolutionize how organizations work day-to-day,” said Mr. Vellore, a third-time entrepreneur and most recently, a Corporate Vice President at Microsoft. “The rise of AI and the continued popularity of hybrid workplaces are two of the defining trends of our time. These, along with the continued push to achieve more with less, have created an urgent need for all organizations to re-examine how they operate and enhance their organizational productivity. Our solution will help enterprises understand, streamline, improve, and orchestrate their rhythms that are at the core of their organizational productivity, and enable every team to achieve best-in-class performance and higher work satisfaction.”

He added: “We are excited to be backed by world-class investors who know us well and with whom we have partnered before. When we considered starting a new business, we knew that we would turn first to Greenoaks and Madrona, deeply aligned partners whose conviction and expertise will amplify what we can accomplish.”

With this funding boost, Rhythms is gearing up for significant growth. They plan to expand their teams both in the U.S. and India, speed up the development of their innovative operating system, and prepare for its market debut. The company has exciting plans ahead, including a product preview for select customers in early 2024, to make its solutions widely accessible later in the same year.

“The invention of software fundamentally transformed the way people work. We believe that the advent of AI will change it again,” said Neil Shah, Partner at Greenoaks. “Few people in the world have mastery of what drives organizational performance and the ability to develop remarkable software that enhances it. Even fewer have the energy to build several successful businesses on top of these insights. Vetri is the rare combination of both. We are privileged to once again partner with Vetri and his team as they build a category-defining product. We look forward to working with them for years to come.