How this Houston innovator plans on revolutionizing AI on a global scale

eyes on AI

Houston-based Allganize, founded by Changsu Lee, is taking its $35 million in investment funding and changing the game of AI on a global scale. Photo via Getty Images

It’s taken people some time, but most of society is finally doing a collective 180-degree flip on its once guarded view of artificial intelligence in favor of being open to the idea that it can help humankind in a myriad of positive ways.

That’s why Houston-based software development company Allganize recently secured $20 million in series B funding to propel its industry-leading AI answer bot, Alli.

The All-in-One LLM Enabler Platform, which intelligently responds to customers through natural chat conversation flows, while also enabling the automation of up to 80 percent of support tickets, allows customers to get serviced faster while improving employee productivity.

With the latest $20 million investment by InterVest and Murex Partners, that brings the total funding into Allganize to $35 million. That investor confidence will ultimately help catapult the company’s AI solutions to the next level and help target its planned Japanese Stock Exchange listing by 2025.

“We will lead the expansion of corporate-specific LLM app markets and accelerate the distribution of enterprise automation AI in USA, Korea, and Japan,” says Changsu Lee, CEO of Allganize. “We are dedicated to empowering companies to develop custom LLM applications, enabling practical tasks execution and work automation.”

From programmer to prototype

Allganize’s plans to go public in 2025 stems from Lee’s early ties to Japan. While Lee is originally from Korea, he got his start in Japan, where he was able to secure his first job as a programmer at a gaming company and years later the first investment for the first company he started, ABLAR.

“I'm originally from Korea and when I got a scholarship from the Japanese government, and I went to the research laboratory of Tokyo Institute of Technology, I was not able to speak Japanese at all,” Lee tells InnovationMap. “But that one year actually changed my life. I could speak Japanese while I was there, and I was able to learn a lot of Japanese cultures, and there in the social system, I became a big fan of Japan, and then after that, so I was really looking for an opportunity to do business with Japan, or in Japan.

“I was originally trying to start a company in Japan, and I started to work as a programmer in a gaming company, and at night time, and also the weekends, I was actually building a product to start a company," he continues. "So back then, that product name was ‘Search for You.’ It was every single person's search history, the trees, then if we can find somebody else who's already advanced, but pretty similar search tree, then I was thinking, we can probably, give better suggestions or the recommendations. This is future knowledge that you could probably expect to learn, and if we can have a million users, then we can leverage, those search histories from Google."

Changsu Lee is the CEO of Allganize. Photo via LinkedIn

From there, Lee built the prototype, while making the bulk of his decisions from Japan. Later, while back in Korea, he expanded his business into Japan and met the biggest VC of Japan at an event in Korea and gave a quick pitch of his company’s service. Ultimately, he got the funding and hired Allganize co-founder Yasuo Sato, who he’s been working with for more than 11 years now.

For Lee, it all comes back to where his first idea and mission was believed in and supported, and that place was Japan. Not surprisingly, the bulk of Lee’s customers are in Japan, and it was there that he began his AI journey, by cutting his teeth in machine learning.

“After changing the company name to 5Rocks, we were providing analytics and marketing automation solutions for mobile game companies,” says Lee. “So even back then, we were actually using machine learning, but it was not deep learning. We were using machine learning to predict every single gamer's remaining lifetime in the game. For example, how many days or how many months is this gamer going to stay in the game and how much money are they going to spend in the game for their game items?

“We were predicting this by using machine learning," he continues. "And after we were acquired by the mobile advertising company, I worked as the SVP of the platform there, and I actually got the opportunity to learn the deep learning.

If it’s possible to dig deeper into deep learning, that’s exactly what Lee did as the senior vice president of Tapjoy. Selling his first company and staying onboard in a much more limited role allowed Lee to have a sort of paid internship or technological rotation program into AI and deep learning, which he believed was going to completely change everything and, as a result, was to be the major foundational key to his next venture, Allganize.

Japanese IPO on the horizon

Fast forward to 2023 and the $35 million in investments, Lee and his team are aiming to expand the company’s existing customer base of over 200 enterprises and an IPO on the Tokyo Stock Exchange in 2025.

Take a quick look around and roll call currently known AI platforms. Google Duet, Microsoft Co-Pilot and, of course, ChatGPT quickly come to mind, right?

Spoiler alert: those are all descendants of Allganize’s Alli All-in-One LLM Enabler Platform, which it continues to enhance. Still, Lee and his team still find themselves having to reassure that AI is not the boogeyman movies like The Terminator or Ex Machina have made it out to be.

“I think the most important thing is in how we can leverage and utilize these AI tools,” says Lee. “And because, at the end of the day, it's still a tool, AI is great. It's really powerful. But it's still the tool for helping humans. For example, for white-collar knowledge workers, productivity is completely different when they are using the AI. AI is also more knowledge-focused, and you can answer all the questions that you have.”

Simply put, AI can add not only add to efficiency and productivity, but it can also answer questions before anyone can think to ask them and fill in the blanks to missing information that one didn’t know was missing or could think was missing.

“As powerful as that sounds, AI still can't replace people because people still have to direct it and guide it to where it needs to go,” says Lee. “And because AI's capability is becoming more and more powerful, it’s important for us to learn how to safely train the AI and how to make the good guidelines that we're using for AI.”

With Allganize focused on large language models, they assist businesses to leverage AI to enhance their employees’ knowledge recall and operational efficiency.

“I'm always saying the LLM model is just an engine of the car,” says Lee. “People are buying cars, people are not buying engines. Of course, the engine is important for the car's performance, but people are actually buying cars, not the engines. So, we are really focusing on what kind of application you really want to do in your organization by using LLM.

"And again, our ultimate focus is all the applications because this AI should be used in the daily life of the enterprise, which is the workflow," he continues. “We call them the LLM app. At the moment, the biggest LLM app is called the cognitive search. So when an employee or the customer is asking a question, then AI is understanding all these internal, the best amount of the documents and knowledge bases and databases and they can give comprehensive correct answers to the users. ... Then AI can actually give better answers and they can also give you another suggestion on what to do next. So, that is the biggest application.”

Additional applications include comparing labor agreements in the labor department or on the human resources side, screening several hundred resumes to find who is the best candidate for an open job requisition. Bonus point: it does all of this without the implicit bias that has been historically problematic for HR teams in their recruiting process.

Allganize is also able to create applications without traditional coding like Java and Python.

“Yeah, that is possible because of the LLM,” says Lee. “Because the LLM is such an amazing AI. So, it can handle most of the logics and data. It has been handled only by the software code. But now, the LLM doesn't cover these things. And so users, like somebody who wants to build any of those complicated workflow automations, they don't really need to write a code and they can just use LLM. And then they can just do visual flowcharts, like the old way. And then that is our app. And then all these things are done just like magic.”

Certainly, there’s been quite a bit of “magic” coming from Allganize and that’s all because of Lee and his innate ability to identify problems that need to be solved before they develop and create applications and solutions to address them ahead of time.

“I think two main things are necessary to get to this point with Allganize,” says Lee. “The first thing is expertise in AI, and the second thing is real domain knowledge.

“And I have been working in enterprise, including telecommunications and gaming a little bit more than 20 years. So, how enterprise is working and how the workflow is being defined and how the company and the teams are collaborating, and I have been with it for 20 years. In my academical background, it's all about AI. And I'm writing a code and seeing the very technical details of all these AI models.”

Lee learned a lot during and after selling his first company that he founded, which put him on the correct path to get the funding needed to realize his dream for Allganize.

“I really want to make this a company which can go long and then big,” says Lee. “And that's why we are working on going public. We are doing business in the U.S., Japan, and South Korea. And at the moment, Japan is our biggest market. So, we are going to go public in Japan in 2025. And from that point, we're going to accelerate our global expansion.”

From Your Site Articles
Allganize recently closed a $20 million series B round of funding, bringing its total amount raised to $35 million. Graphic via allganize.ai

Houston AI company raises $35M, plans for Japanese IPO

fresh funding

A Houston tech startup with an artificial intelligence technology has announced it's raised two rounds of funding as it plans to continue developing its product and IPO in Japan.

Allganize recently closed a $20 million series B round of funding, bringing its total amount raised to $35 million, according to the company. Allganize developed Alli, an all-in-one platform for enabling large language models, that's used by over 200 enterprise and public companies globally, including Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation, Nomura Securities, Hitachi, Fujitsu, and KB Securities.

The funding will go toward expanding corporate-specific LLM app markets and expanding enterprise automation AI in the United States, Korea, and Japan. The company has a goal of listing on the Japanese Stock Exchange by 2025.

"This investment accelerates our journey towards global expansion and achieving a milestone of listing on the Japanese stock exchange by 2025. Our focus is on leveraging LLMs to revolutionize work productivity. We are dedicated to empowering companies to develop custom LLM applications, enabling practical tasks execution and work automation,” Changsu Lee, CEO of Allganize, says in a news release.

In the latest round, InterVest and Murex Partners joined existing investors ATINUM Investment and Stonebridge Ventures.

"Allganize's generative AI-based services have garnered acclaim for their technological excellence and practicality among global financial firms. We foresee substantial revenue growth following this investment," Kang Dong-min, vice president of Murex, says in the release.

Allganize was founded in 2017 in California and has offices in Houston, Seoul, and Tokyo. The company's customers range from the insurance and financial services to oil and gas, construction, and more.

Ad Placement 300x100
Ad Placement 300x600

CultureMap Emails are Awesome

Property Showcase

Rice launches 'brain economy' initiative at World Economic Forum

brain health

Rice University has launched an initiative that will position “brain capital” as a key asset in the 21st century.

Rice rolled out the Global Brain Economy Initiative on Jan. 21 at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

“This initiative positions brain capital, or brain health and brain skills, at the forefront of global economic development, particularly in the age of artificial intelligence,” the university said in a news release.

The Rice-based initiative, whose partners are the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston and the Davos Alzheimer’s Collaborative, aligns with a recent World Economic Forum and McKinsey Health Institute report titled “The Human Advantage: Stronger Brains in the Age of AI,” co-authored by Rice researcher Harris Eyre. Eyre is leading the initiative.

“With an aging population and the rapid transformation of work and society driven by AI, the urgency has never been greater to focus on brain health and build adaptable human skills—both to support people and communities and to ensure long-term economic stability,” says Amy Dittmar, a Rice provost and executive vice president for academic affairs.

This initiative works closely with the recently launched Rice Brain Institute.

In its first year, the initiative will establish a global brain research agenda, piloting brain economy strategies in certain regions, and introducing a framework to guide financial backers and leaders. It will also advocate for public policies tied to the brain economy.

The report from the McKinsey Health Institute and World Economic Forum estimates that advancements in brain health could generate $6.2 trillion in economic gains by 2050.

“Stronger brains build stronger societies,” Eyre says. “When we invest in brain health and brain skills, we contribute to long-term growth, resilience, and shared prosperity.”

Rice Alliance and the Ion leader Brad Burke to retire this summer

lasting legacy

Brad Burke—a Rice University associate vice president who leads the Ion District’s Rice Alliance for Technology and Entrepreneurship and is a prominent figure in Houston’s startup community—is retiring this summer after a 25-year career at the university.

Burke will remain at the Rice Alliance as an adviser until his retirement on June 30.

“Brad’s impact on Rice extends far beyond any single program or initiative. He grew the Rice Alliance from a promising campus initiative into one of the most respected university-based entrepreneurship platforms,” Rice President Reginald DesRoches said in a news release.

During Burke’s tenure, the Rice Business School went from unranked in entrepreneurship to The Princeton Review’s No. 1 graduate entrepreneurship program for the past seven years and a top 20 entrepreneurship program in U.S. News & World Report’s rankings for the past 14 years.

“Brad didn’t just build programs — he built an ecosystem, a culture, and a reputation for Rice that now resonates around the world,” said Peter Rodriguez, dean of the business school. “Through his vision and steady leadership, Rice became a place where founders are taken seriously, ideas are rigorously supported, and entrepreneurship is embedded in the fabric of the university.”

One of Burke’s notable achievements at Rice is the creation of the Rice Business Plan Competition. During his tenure, the competition has grown from nine student teams competing for $10,000 into the world’s largest intercollegiate competition for student-led startups. Today, the annual competition welcomes 42 student-led startups that vie for more than $1 million in prizes.

Away from Rice, Burke has played a key role in cultivating entrepreneurship in the energy sector: He helped establish the Energy Tech Venture Forum along with Houston Energy and Climate Startup Week.

Furthermore, Burke co-founded the Texas University Network for Innovation and Entrepreneurship in 2008 to bolster the entrepreneurship programs at every university in Texas. In 2016, the Rice Alliance assumed leadership of the Global Consortium of Entrepreneurship Centers.

In 2023, Burke received the Trailblazer Award at the 2023 Houston Innovation Awards and was recognized by the Deshpande Foundation for his contributions to innovation and entrepreneurship in higher education.

“Working with an amazing team to build the entrepreneurial ecosystem at Rice, in Houston, and beyond has been the privilege of my career,” Burke said in the release. “It has been extremely gratifying to hear entrepreneurs say our efforts changed their lives, while bringing new innovations to market. The organization is well-positioned to help drive exponential growth across startups, investors, and the entrepreneurial ecosystem.”

Starting April 15, John “JR” Reale Jr. will serve as interim associate vice president at Rice and executive director of the Rice Alliance. He is managing director of the alliance. Reale is co-founder of the Station Houston startup hub and a startup investor. He was also recently named director for startups and investor engagement at the Ion.

“The Rice Alliance has always been about helping founders gain advantages to realize their visions,” Reale said. “Under Brad’s leadership, the Rice Alliance has become a globally recognized platform that is grounded in trust and drives transformational founder outcomes. My commitment is to honor what Brad has built and led while continuing to serve our team and community, deepen relationships and deliver impact.”

Burke joined the Houston Innovators Podcast back in 2022. Listen to the full interview here.

Houston team uses CPRIT funding to develop nanodrug for cancer immunotherapy

cancer research

With a relative five-year survival rate of 50 percent, pancreatic cancer is a diagnosis nobody wants. At 60 percent, the prognosis for lung cancer isn’t much rosier. That’s because both cancers contain regulatory B cells (Bregs), which block the body’s natural immunity, making it harder to fight the enemies within.

Newly popular immunotherapies in a category known as STING agonists may stimulate natural cancer defenses. However, they can also increase Bregs while simultaneously causing significant side effects. But Wei Gao, assistant professor of pharmacology at the University of Houston College of Pharmacy, may have a solution to that conundrum.

Gao and her team have developed Nano-273, a dual-function drug, packaged in an albumin-based particle, that boosts the immune system to help it better fight pancreatic and lung cancers. Gao’s lab recently received a $900,000 grant from the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT) to aid in fueling her research into the nanodrug.

“Nano-273 both activates STING and blocks PI3Kγ—a pathway that drives Breg expansion, while albumin nanoparticles help deliver the drug directly to immune cells, reducing unwanted side effects,” Gao said in a press release. “This approach reduces harmful Bregs while boosting immune cells that attack cancer, leading to stronger and more targeted anti-tumor responses.”

In studies using models of both pancreatic and lung cancers, Nano-273 has shown great promise with low toxicity. Its best results thus far have involved using the drug in combination with immunotherapy or chemotherapy.

With the CPRIT funds, Gao and her team will be able to charge closer to clinical use with a series of important steps. Those include continuing to test Nano-273 alongside other drugs, including immune checkpoint inhibitors. Safety studies will follow, but with future patients in mind, Gao will also work toward improving her drug’s production, making sure that it’s safe and high-quality every time, so that it is eventually ready for trials.

Gao added: “If successful, this project could lead to a new type of immunotherapy that offers lasting tumor control and improved survival for patients with pancreatic and lung cancers, two diseases that urgently need better treatments."

View All Listings