Eightfold co-founders raise $35M for Viven, an AI digital twin startup for querying unavailable coworkers

Summary

While employees spend much of their day communicating and coordinating amongst themselves on projects, this effort is often undermined by the availability of specific individuals. When a colleague with vital information is away — whether on vacation or in a different time zone — the rest of the team must delay progress until that person responds. Ashutosh Garg and Varun Kacholia, the co-founders of Eightfold — an AI recruiting startup last valued at $2.1 billion — believe that advances in LLMs and data privacy technologies can help solve some aspects of this costly problem. Earlier this year, they launched Viven, a digital twins startup with a mission to grant employees access to crucial information from teammates even when those colleagues are unavailable. On Wednesday, Viven emerged out of stealth mode with $35 million in seed funding from Khosla Ventures, Foundation Capital, FPV Ventures, and others. Viven develops a specialized LLM for each employee, effectively creating a digital twin by accessing their internal electronic documents such as email, Slack, and Google Docs. Other employees in the organization can then query that person’s digital twin to get immediate answers related to common projects and shared knowledge. “When each and every person has a digital twin, you can just talk to their twin as if you’re talking to that person and get the response,” Ashutosh Garg told TechCrunch. One major hurdle is that people just can’t share everything with anyone who asks. Employees often handle sensitive information or have personal files they want to keep private from the rest of the team. According to Garg, Viven’s technology solves that complex problem through a concept known as pairwise context and privacy. This enables the startup’s LLMs to precisely determine what information can be shared and with whom across the organization. Techcrunch event San Francisco | October 27-29, 2025 Viven’s LLMs are smart enough to recognize personal context and know what informa...