Introduction
Arcade, an AI agent infrastructure startup founded by Alex Salazar and Sam Partee, has successfully secured $12 million in funding from Laude Ventures, a newly launched fund by Andy Konwinski in 2024.
Founders’ Background
Salazar is a repeat entrepreneur, previously known for his work with Stormpath, an authentication API that was acquired by Okta, where he later served as VP. Partee has experience with LLM-based applications and significant contributions to open-source projects like LangChain and LlamaIndex.
Company Inception & Challenges
Founded in February 2024, Arcade aims to address the limitations faced by AI agents, especially their poor performance in verifying private data. Salazar’s early ambition was to create a site reliability agent but soon realized that many conventional AI agents largely depend on public data, reducing their effectiveness.
Transition to Tool-Calling Platform
After recognizing the shortcomings of traditional agents, the founders pivoted Arcade to focus on a tool-calling platform. This platform enhances agent performance by enabling them to access applications and data with the same privileges as the users they support.
Integration and Pricing
Arcade operates on a usage-based pricing model or subscriptions, integrating seamlessly with OAuth for authentication across multiple SaaS services. It also ensures secure token management, preventing direct LLM access to user credentials.
Investor Interest
Investors like Pete Sonsini were attracted to Arcade due to its focus on infrastructure, differentiating it from other AI startups that focus primarily on the superficial appeal of LLMs.
