It is no secret that artificial intelligence (AI) has evolved exponentially in recent years. From smarter cars and automated robots to personal home assistants that can carry out simple tasks such as turning up the A/C, AI has become an essential aspect of everyday life. Many believe that success in AI is defined in terms of smartness and power – but what if the purpose of this technology shifted, to become more energy conscious and sustainable?

This drive for sustainable technologies is what led to the launch of iGenius, an Italian augmented intelligence startup that develops solutions for business data. The company’s mission “is to lead the path of innovation that artificial intelligence has paved in the business intelligence and decision-making areas,” explains founder and CEO Uljan Sharka. With this in mind he created Crystal, the first virtual data intelligence advisor to adopt a real data-driven decision-making approach at any level to make an impact on business.

Crystal is not just another business intelligence tool. It connects in real time to multiple data sources and shows information through a conversational interface. For example, Sharka explains, “every time someone needs to make a decision, they can ask Crystal for advice as if they were talking to a colleague.” The iGenius team believes that artificial intelligence can be everyone’s best friend.

Meet Crystal, your new sustainable go-to advisor

Crystal is a conversational AI that auto-classifies business requests, according to underlying information, to understand users’ needs. Its user-centric interface makes it easy even for the less digitally literate to adopt and understand it. This technology is defined as a novel sustainable AI because of its ability to “cut the required computing power by half”, claims Shakra. In traditional AI, users need to provide hundreds or sometimes thousands of question examples to train the API: Crystal instead auto-classifies data in order to skip this step.

The technology is available in six languages and is used by almost 30,000 brands and dozens of enterprises, particularly in the financial services, insurance, healthcare, and energy and utility sectors. “We want to allow every company on Earth to leverage data-driven decision making,” says Sharka. In order to make this happen, the company has constantly stood by the idea of AI solutions that are created to be sustainable, from the first line of code to the moment they are in the hands of the consumer. 

According to Sharka, “the Crystal platform is made up of three main proprietary components: fast data retrieval, machine deep learning, and natural language processing.”  He continues by revealing that “based on a microservice approach, our platform uses many programming languages to make it fully integrated and cloud-agnostic.” This AI is currently in its second software version, which has allowed it to be lighter, faster and smarter than ever, as well as to easily connect to any open channel. What once took three to six months to integrate into a company’s data set, now only takes minutes with the updated version. 

A win-win collaboration with Enel

As digitalization in business becomes more imperative, at Enel we have worked with iGenius to co-create and implement Crystal within our energy plants for Enel Global Thermal Generation, in order to access data in real time for various locations around the world. By seamlessly using Crystal’s conversational technology to monitor plant generation capacity, temperature and maintenance levels, among other things, we are able to increase business efficiency and make smarter and timelier decisions.  

We met iGenius through a startup scouting round, specifically targeted towards AI emerging companies. Together, we defined and shared business objectives. “Innovation and sustainability cannot help but go hand in hand and, for that reason, it is crucial to innovate and disrupt the B2B data industry to make it more efficient, accessible, and easy to use,” mentions the CEO. Thereby, a partnership with Enel truly was a natural fit.

Sharka is proud to say, “our company has evolved thanks to our connection with Enel: their collaborative culture has allowed us to continue to grow.” By envisioning a future where artificial intelligence can be both sustainable and less complex, iGenius is revolutionizing the technology and taking on an active role in the global energy transition.