Former Google applied AI expert launches AI startup Guickly, raises $4.2M in seed funding

Former lead of applied AI at Google, Prashant Jalan, has launched Guickly, an enterprise AI measurement company. The startup has raised $4.2 million in a seed funding round led by Engineering Capital, with participation from Converge VC, Neon Fund and angel investors. 

The round will support Guickly’s work on measuring AI usage and spending, improving visibility across corporate systems, and helping enterprises manage costs as adoption increases.

The San Jose-based startup was founded by Indian-origin entrepreneur Jalan, who has earlier worked on the Google Maps speed-limit feature and built a profiler to optimise TPU performance.

At Guickly, Jalan is applying his technical knowhow to solve a growing enterprise problem: understanding where AI is being used and whether the money spent on it is producing value.

Guickly's product acts as an independent measurement layer across an organisation’s environment. It is designed to identify AI tools and agents, including unauthorised or untracked ‘shadow AI’, attribute spending, set budgets by employee or tool, and flag waste such as unused licences and expensive model choices. The company says prompts, source code and other sensitive material remain on-premises and are not transmitted to its servers.

Traditional software is often sold through predictable per-user subscriptions, while generative AI can create variable costs linked to usage. Tokens are small units of text processed by an AI model; so heavy usage can inflate bills. Guickly says this makes financial visibility and governance increasingly important as AI moves from experimentation into routine business processes.

Jalan said leaders should not have to chase information about their own AI use. “We believe time is sacred, and speed is respect,” he said. 

The funding arrives amid strong investor interest in enterprise-focused AI. Bengaluru-based Ringg AI recently raised $10 million from Peak XV Partners and existing investors to expand its voice AI agents for businesses. Neysa, an AI acceleration cloud platform, raised $1.2 billion in February, including planned debt, to expand GPU infrastructure.