Langdock raises $3M with General Catalyst to help companies avoid vendor lock-in with LLMs

Many large corporations want to embrace the AI revolution, but are hesitant to be tied down to a single foundational model. This creates a demand for a layer between companies and large language models (LLMs) that allows companies to easily choose LLMs without being locked into one platform indefinitely.

Langdock is targeting this market with its chat interface that acts as an intermediary between LLMs and companies. Based in Germany, the startup recently secured a $3 million seed round led by General Catalyst and its European seed-stage partner, La Famiglia.

According to Lennard Schmidt, co-founder and CEO of Langdock, companies are looking to avoid being solely dependent on one LLM provider. Langdock provides an interface that enables companies to select from a variety of underlying models from different vendors for their employees to use.

Langdock's chat interface allows companies to access foundational models, open source models, or even host their own models, making them easily accessible to employees.

The funding round also saw participation from Y Combinator and notable German founders, such as Rolf Schrömgens (Trivago), Hanno Renner (Personio), Johannes Reck (GetYourGuide), and Erik Muttersbach (Forto), along with around 25 other angel investors.

Langdock is particularly focused on the European market, anticipating that companies in the EU will seek compliant ways to integrate LLMs securely. This allows employees to work in a more controlled environment, where they can create prompt libraries, utilize multiple LLMs, and add sensitive documents.

In addition to the chat interface, Langdock also offers security, cloud, and on-premises solutions.

Langdock has already attracted several customers, including Merck, GetYourGuide, HeyJobs, and Forto. Merck has implemented Langdock's interface for its 63,000 employees. Walid Mehanna, chief data and AI officer at Merck, praised the technology, stating, "We are early adopters of GenAI and see a paradigm shift in how technology can enable our employees to become more effective and efficient in their daily work life."

While Langdock is a key player in this market, it is not alone. Paris-based Dust has raised €5 million and is backed by Sequoia. Dust is developing an interface for companies to leverage LLMs in areas such as customer service, internal reports, and research. In comparison, Langdock's chat interface caters to a wider range of use cases and can be utilized by various staff members.