Since returning from Andreessen Horowitzâs accelerator program last summer, the founders of Toronto-based OpenSesame have found a new niche and a new identity.
âWhat weâve been focusing on is customer engagement, where we think insurance is pretty broken, especially for Gen Z.”
Jai Mansukhani,
General Magic
Co-founders Jai Mansukhani and Anthony Azrak announced Tuesday that they have rebranded their agentic AI startup to General Magic, as part of a newfound focus on building agents for insurance companies to text with their clients.
The new name, General Magic, is a nod to the Apple spinoff company of the same name that was founded in 1989 and considered to have laid the groundwork for technologies such as multimedia email, touch screens, and the modern iPhone.
âIt matches our ambitions of making it so that everyday moments become magical, not just for technical people, but for the vast majority of the population,â Azrak told BetaKit in an interview.
The startup began with a simple mission: bringing agentic AI workflows to industries that were using clunky legacy-management software. Then, the team says it landed a large insurer (whose identity they could not reveal due to a non-disclosure agreement) as a client, just as Mansukhani was dealing with a household water leak and a frustrating claim process.
âWhat weâve been focusing on is customer engagement, where we think insurance is pretty broken, especially for Gen Z,â Mansukhani said. Some surveys have shown that people aged 18-34 are less likely to pick up the phone than other generations and prefer a text to a phone callâa trend that General Magic says it can help companies address.
Building on the companyâs previous work in agentic workflows, General Magic says its technology allows insurance companies to offer a texting agent that interacts dynamically with customers as they file insurance claims and ask about their coverage.
On the companyâs end, managers can track customer intent and outcomes from every text conversation. The value proposition is better customer engagement; for example a customer can get an instant, personalized response by sending a quick text instead of waiting to be connected to a customer service line. General Magic claims its tech can reduce call volumes by 30 percent and cut more than 250 hours monthly.
RELATED: a16z says OpenSesame to Canadian agentic AI startup for its speedrun accelerator
Mansukhani and Azrak went through the three-month a16z speedrun accelerator last summer. The program offers $1 million USD ($1.36 million CAD) in equity, access to millions of dollars in credits for software and AI tools, and hands-on mentorship and networking with one of the worldâs most prominent venture firms.
The accelerator is newer to the game than Y Combinator, which made headlines last week when it quietly changed its rules to remove Canada from its list of investable sites. For its part, a16z speedrun marketing lead Ryan Rigney told BetaKit that the program doesnât force teams to redomicile in the USâCanadian startups Pluvo and Syncere AI are part of its latest cohort.
OpenSesame is now based in Toronto. The six-person team is planning on landing more enterprise insurance customers, which itâs been courting through dinners and monthly events in Toronto and New York City.
Disclosure: Aaron Anandji, General Magic’s head of growth, is an occasional freelance writer for BetaKit.
Feature image courtesy General Magic.