query-comprehension-iphone-72xozloThere are many artificial intelligence-powered apps out there today, whether it be from Google, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, or other startups, that provide instant answers to basic questions.

Ozlo wants to take it to another level.

The Palo Alto-based startup, which opened an engineering office in Seattle this summer, today launched its first app and “next-generation AI platform” for iOS and the web.

According to the company, Ozlo is different from other virtual assistants because it can link together multiple sources of information to answer more complicated questions that have meaning and context like, “What’s a good place to watch the game tonight?” or, “Good place for a date nearby,” or, “Best gluten-free pizza delivered.”

“He reads all menus to find gluten free options that have good reviews, then shows you the ones that deliver, across all the different delivery services he knows about,” Ozlo notes on its website. “A task impossible for a human, Ozlo completes it in seconds.”

Ozlo also provides information about weather, news, movie showtimes, and more. Ozlo knows more than 20 million places in the U.S. and its sources include more than 300 million facts provided by partners like Yelp, TripAdvisor, Zagat, and more.

Ozlo plans to make its app available “everywhere” and open its platform to third-party developers and data providers.

“Assistants are becoming an important starting point for people to get things done, just like the search engine became for the web,” Charles Jolley, co-founder and CEO of Ozlo, said in a statement. “Ozlo’s unique ability to combine information from multiple sources means that you can trust him to give you the best answer, no matter where it comes from. For developers, it provides an independent, non-competitive platform for discovery.”

Ozlo co-founders Charles Jolley and Mike Hanson. Photo via Ozlo.
Ozlo co-founders Charles Jolley and Mike Hanson. Photo via Ozlo.

Founded in 2014 by former Facebook engineering manager Charles Jolley and former Mozilla Principal Engineer Mike Hanson, Ozlo has spent the past two years building its conversational, interactive mobile search bot. It raised $14 million in May from from Greylock and AME Cloud Ventures, a fund started by Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang.

John Lilly, a partner at Greylock and former CEO at Mozilla, wrote a blog post in May that detailed how he hasn’t “really found anything else quite like Ozlo.”

“Ozlo provides something new: a quick & easy way to have a conversation about the world around you, supported by an extremely deep technology stack,” Lilly wrote. “It’s hard to overstate how difficult it is to make something so challenging feel so simple, and it’s great to finally be able to share it with the world.”

Like what you're reading? Subscribe to GeekWire's free newsletters to catch every headline

Job Listings on GeekWork

Find more jobs on GeekWork. Employers, post a job here.