Marc Benioff-Backed Startup June Tackles the AI Deployment Problem
AI has become a critical component of modern businesses, but its deployment can be a daunting task. According to Efrat Rapoport, a former Salesforce executive, the industry's answer to AI implementation is to hire more and more people, but this approach is not scalable.
June's AI Solution
June, a new startup backed by Marc Benioff's Time Ventures, has emerged from stealth with a $20 million pre-seed funding round. The company's founders, including Rapoport, Ohad Hen, Barak Goldstein, and Idan Tsitiat, have a different approach to AI implementation. They believe that AI can be made more accessible to businesses by simplifying the integration process.
"AI, paradoxically, increases the demand for professional services," says Rapoport. "The industry's answer to AI implementation is, 'let's hire more and more and more people.'"
June's platform scans a company's existing systems to understand its business processes, find bottlenecks, and then build more optimized, agent-powered processes to replace them. The platform provides a clear roadmap for implementation, automatically notifying teams through the company's comms channels.
- June's platform scans a company's systems to understand its business processes and find bottlenecks.
- The platform builds more optimized, agent-powered processes to replace existing ones.
- June provides a clear roadmap for implementation, automatically notifying teams.
Real-World Success Stories
Paul Akinmade, chief strategy officer at CMG, a major U.S. mortgage lender, moved his company's software engineering to Claude Code but hit roadblocks trying to integrate it with Salesforce. June changed that, giving his team a clear view of where to deploy agents and letting them do so safely, even before the official kickoff call between the two companies.
"If your product requires FDEs, I don't want your product," Akinmade says. "I want an easy-to-use tool."
June's platform is designed to complement FDEs and consultants, but its customers may be drawn to it for the opposite reason: it lets them avoid FDEs altogether.