Integration platform AI Squared announced today the closing of a $6 million seed round led by NEA with participation from Ridgeline Partners.

Launched in 2021, AI Squared helps companies adopt artificial intelligence by using a low-code platform to integrate it into existing applications in a timely and straightforward manner. Its founder, Benjamin Harvey, was inspired to start the company after a decade at the U.S. National Security Agency, where he saw how it and other organizations struggled to adopt artificial intelligence into existing applications.

The struggle came from what’s known as the last-mile challenge, which refers to the costly and time-consuming process of implementing an AI model within an application used on a day-to-day basis, like Netflix’s program recommender system, he told TechCrunch.

AI Squared helps solve the last-mile problem, assisting companies in adopting AI by using a low-code platform to integrate it into existing applications.

Harvey said he only pitched a handful of investors before securing the seed round, and the fundraising process lasted just three months. The company plans to use the money to mature the product to prepare for the community and enterprise editions of the platform. It will also help expand the engineering team, build a sales group, add marketers and expand community relations.

Ultimately, the company is gearing up for a Series A in hopes of becoming the next unicorn. Six out of the 600 unicorns created last year had a Black founder (which is 1%). But Harvey is hopeful that with ongoing success and networking, his company will continue on its journey. AI Squared already has a cooperative development and research agreement with the NSA, a contract with the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab and is partners with Databricks, Vanguard, Tableau, Salesforce, Nvidia and Microsoft.

“As Black founders who are learning this complex environment for the first time, we need to build networks of technical executive communities that will act as our lifeline,” Harvey said. “That will ultimately open doors for [us as] the next generation of Black founders.”