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AI Startup June Launches With $20M to Simplify Enterprise AI Adoption
June, founded by former Salesforce executives, emerged from stealth with $20 million in pre-seed funding to help large companies deploy AI more reliably. The round was led by Marc Benioff's Time Ventures.
For many large businesses, getting AI tools to work reliably has become a costly puzzle. The industry's standard answer has been to deploy forward-deployed engineers, or FDEs, who embed with clients to set up and maintain AI systems. This has created a growing services burden, a problem the new startup June aims to address.
June's four co-founders, including CEO Efrat Rapoport, have a different vision. They believe AI itself can ease the deployment process, reducing the need for armies of integration specialists. The company formally launched on Monday with $20 million in pre-seed funding to pursue that goal.
The round was led by Marc Benioff's Time Ventures, with participation from Michael Dell, Aaron Levie, and George Kurtz. June declined to disclose its valuation, but the investor lineup underscores confidence in the team's approach.
Rapoport and her co-founders previously built Bonobo AI, a language-model company acquired by Salesforce in 2019. The group then spent several years working on Salesforce's AI initiatives before departing to start June, motivated by watching customers struggle to integrate AI into their existing platforms.
The startup's early traction with investors was unusually strong; Rapoport noted that the raise was completed without a formal pitch deck.