AI agents are poised to begin autonomously handling purchases and scheduling for people. However, Michael Fanous, a UC Berkeley computer science graduate and former machine learning engineer at CareRev, contends these systems lack a crucial element: the complete context needed to genuinely comprehend the individuals they are designed to assist. He points out that machines currently have difficulty determining if a person’s LinkedIn profile, Instagram activity, and public government records all refer to the same individual.

To address this gap, he partnered with his father, Emad Fanous, an experienced CTO, to create Nyne. This startup aims to serve as an intelligence layer that enables AI agents to understand humans by analyzing their entire digital presence.

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On Friday, Nyne revealed it has secured $5.3 million in seed funding. The round was led by Wischoff Ventures and South Park Commons, with contributions from several angel investors, including Gil Elbaz, co-founder of Applied Semantics and an early architect of Google AdSense.

While it might appear that classic machine learning has already solved this problem—given the effectiveness of Google’s ad targeting—Michael Fanous disagrees. He explains that Google’s advantage stems from its unique access to user search histories and cross-platform activity, a valuable dataset the company will not share with external agents. For others, “this is an oddly hard problem to solve,” noted Nichole Wischoff, founder of the solo VC fund Wischoff Ventures, which supported the investment.

Nyne’s approach involves triangulating personal information by examining data from major social platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and X, as well as activity on apps such as SoundCloud and Strava. As more consumer companies adopt AI agents, they can integrate Nyne to provide those agents with a richer, real-world understanding of both current and prospective customers.

“I can give them any piece of information about a person that could be useful to make the right next action,” Fanous stated. He added, “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.”

According to Wischoff, the market for this data is enormous and valuable for any business using AI agents to engage customers. She illustrated, “How do I know you’re pregnant and sell you A, B, or C as early as possible.” While earlier ad tech firms collected some of this information, Nyne plans to execute it with far greater precision for the emerging world of AI agents.

Regarding the father-son collaboration, the CEO describes an ideal partnership with his CTO. “I think with co-founders, it becomes easy to walk away when things don’t work,” he remarked. “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.”