Brain Technologies raises $50M+ for the launch of Natural, a natural language search engine and ‘superapp’

Voice-based and other personal assistant apps — which use natural language and hefty AI engines in the back end to source information to address your various questions, do your e-commerce bidding, or control one electronic device or another in your home — have been around for years, but too often they have come up short when it comes to user experience, failing to nail the right solutions to your queries. Today a new app is launching from a startup that has largely been in stealth mode up to now to try to address that disparity. Brain Technologies is today announcing $50 million in funding, and along with that is releasing Natural, an iOS app, in the U.S. market.

The $50 million (which is actually described as “over $50 million” by the company, with an exact number undisclosed), meanwhile, is coming from a very interesting mix of investors — backers include Laurene Powell Jobs’ Emerson Collective, Goodwater Capital, Scott Cook and WTT Investment, a list that underscores some of the attention that Brain has been getting, even before having released a single product.

Jerry Yue, the young founder and CEO of Brain — a repeat entrepreneur and robotics enthusiast whose last company, a grocery delivery service in China called Benlai, is still going strong — said in an interview that he does not like to call Natural a “personal assistant” app, not because of the shortcomings of so many of these in the past, but because of the voice association many have with the concept.

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