Nyne, a new artificial intelligence startup, is working to solve a growing challenge in the AI industry — helping AI agents better understand the full context of the people they serve. As AI systems begin taking on tasks such as making purchases and scheduling decisions for users, the company believes current technology struggles to connect scattered pieces of a person’s digital identity across multiple platforms.
Nyne was founded by Michael Fanous, a University of California, Berkeley computer science graduate and former machine learning engineer at CareRev, along with his father Emad Fanous, an experienced CTO. Michael Fanous argues that machines today struggle to confirm whether profiles across platforms like LinkedIn, Instagram and public government records belong to the same individual. To solve this problem, the father-son duo built Nyne to act as an intelligence layer that allows AI agents to understand people through their broader digital footprint.
The company announced on Friday that it has raised $5.3 million in seed funding. The round was led by Wischoff Ventures and South Park Commons, with participation from several angel investors including Gil Elbaz, co-founder of Applied Semantics and an early pioneer behind Google AdSense. While companies like Google have historically used machine learning to target users effectively through advertising, Nyne’s CEO believes that advantage comes from Google’s exclusive access to search histories and cross-platform activity — data that external AI agents cannot access. For other companies trying to build AI-driven services, investor Nichole Wischoff said, “this is an oddly hard problem to solve.”
According to Fanous, Nyne addresses this challenge by deploying millions of agents across the internet to analyse publicly available digital footprints. These agents collect signals from multiple platforms, including Instagram, Facebook, X, SoundCloud and Strava and then apply machine learning to link them together. The goal is to help consumer-facing companies give their AI agents a deeper understanding of both current and potential customers. “I can give them any piece of information about a person that could be useful to make the right next action,” Fanous said. “Once you make all these connections, you can understand a person fairly deeply, their interests, their hobbies and how they think about very specific things.” Wischoff believes the potential market is enormous, especially for businesses using AI agents to interact with customers. “How do I know you’re pregnant and sell you A, B, or C as early as possible?” she said. The startup also highlights the unique dynamic between its founders. Reflecting on working with his father, Fanous said, “I think with co-founders, it becomes easy to walk away when things don’t work. If I have to ping him at three in the morning to finish a launch, I know he’s going to still love me the next day.”
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