Artificial Intelligence

Are Workplace Chats Becoming the Next Layer of AI Memory?

As workplace knowledge spreads across chats, AI firms are building systems that can structure, retrieve and preserve it over time.

Updated

May 11, 2026 5:24 PM

A messaging app on a phone. PHOTO: ADOBE STOCK

Votee AI, an enterprise AI company headquartered in Hong Kong, has partnered with its Toronto-based research lab Beever AI to launch Beever Atlas. The new platform is designed to turn workplace chats into searchable knowledge that AI systems can retrieve and understand.

The release focuses on a growing issue inside organisations. Much of today’s workplace knowledge now exists inside chat platforms such as Slack, Microsoft Teams, Discord and Telegram. Important discussions, project decisions and technical information often disappear into long message histories that are difficult to search later.

Beever AI developed the platform to organise those conversations into a structured system for AI assistants. The software connects with Telegram, Discord, Mattermost, Microsoft Teams and Slack, then converts conversations into linked records of people, projects, files and decisions.

The collaboration combines Votee AI’s enterprise infrastructure work with Beever AI’s research around AI memory systems. The companies are releasing two versions of the product. The open-source edition is aimed at individual developers, researchers and creators. The enterprise edition is designed for banks, government agencies and larger organisations with stricter security requirements.

The release also reflects a broader shift happening across the AI industry. Companies are increasingly looking at how AI systems store and retrieve long-term knowledge, rather than relying solely on large context windows or search-based retrieval.

Earlier this year, OpenAI founding member and former director of AI at Tesla  Andrej Karpathy discussed the growing need for what he described as “LLM Knowledge Bases.” He argued that AI systems need structured and evolving memory rather than depending only on context windows and vector search.

Beever Atlas approaches that problem through workplace communication. Instead of focusing mainly on uploaded files, the system is designed around conversations that happen daily across team chat platforms. It can also process images, PDFs, voice notes and video files within the same searchable system.

The companies say the software is designed to work directly with AI assistants and coding tools such as Cursor, AWS Kiro and Qwen Code. Integrations for OpenClaw and Hermes Agent are expected later in 2026.

Pak-Sun Ting, Co-Founder and CEO of Votee AI  said: "Hong Kong has always been known for property and finance. Beever Atlas is proof that world-class AI infrastructure can emerge from an HK-headquartered company and be shared openly with the world. Every growing organization faces the same silent liability: conversational knowledge loss. Beever Atlas turns this perishable resource into a compounding organizational asset."

A large part of the enterprise version focuses on privacy and access control. The system mirrors permissions from Slack and Microsoft Teams so users can only retrieve information they are already authorised to access. Permission updates are reflected automatically when access changes inside company systems.

The enterprise edition also includes audit logs, encryption controls and data retention settings for organisations handling sensitive internal data. Companies can run the software entirely inside their own infrastructure using Docker and connect it to their preferred AI models through LiteLLM.

The companies argue that organising information is more useful than simply storing chat archives. Jacky Chan Co-Founder and CTO of Votee AI said: "The key technical decision was to treat agent memory as a knowledge engineering problem, not a retrieval problem. Structure beats similarity — a typed graph of who works on what is more useful to an AI than vector search over a Slack archive."

The software also includes protections against prompt injection attacks and systems designed to reduce hallucinated responses. According to the companies, the AI is designed to return “I don't know” with citations when confidence is low instead of generating unsupported answers.

As workplace communication becomes increasingly fragmented across chat platforms, companies are beginning to treat internal conversations as information that AI systems can organise, retrieve and build on. Beever Atlas reflects a broader push to turn everyday workplace communication into long-term organisational memory.

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Funding & Deals

Bedrock Robotics Hits US$1.75B Valuation Following US$270M Series B Funding

Inside the funding round driving the shift to intelligent construction fleets

Updated

March 17, 2026 1:02 AM

Aerial shot of an excavator. PHOTO: UNSPLASH

Bedrock Robotics has raised US$270 million in Series B funding as it works to integrate greater automation into the construction industry. The round, co-led by CapitalG and the Valor Atreides AI Fund, values the San Francisco-based company at US$1.75 billion, bringing its total funding to more than US$350 million.

The size of the investment reflects growing interest in technologies that can change how large infrastructure and industrial projects are built. Bedrock is not trying to reinvent construction from scratch. Instead, it is focused on upgrading the machines contractors already use—so they can work more efficiently, safely and consistently.

Founded in 2024 by former Waymo engineers, Bedrock develops systems that allow heavy equipment to operate with increasing levels of autonomy. Its software and hardware can be retrofitted onto machines such as excavators, bulldozers and loaders. Rather than relying on one-off robotic tools, the company is building a connected platform that lets fleets of machines understand their surroundings and coordinate with one another on job sites.

This is what Bedrock calls “system-level autonomy”. Its technology combines cameras, lidar and AI models to help machines perceive terrain, detect obstacles, track work progress and carry out tasks like digging and grading with precision. Human supervisors remain in control, monitoring operations and stepping in when needed. Over time, Bedrock aims to reduce the amount of direct intervention those machines require.

The funding comes as contractors face rising pressure to deliver projects faster and with fewer available workers. In the press release, Bedrock notes that the industry needs nearly 800,000 additional workers over the next two years and that project backlogs have grown to more than eight months. These constraints are pushing firms to explore new ways to keep sites productive without compromising safety or quality.

Bedrock states that autonomy can help address those challenges. Not by removing people from the equation—but by allowing crews to supervise more equipment at once and reduce idle time. If machines can operate longer, with better awareness of their environment, sites can run more smoothly and with fewer disruptions.

The company has already started deploying its system in large-scale excavation work, including manufacturing and infrastructure projects. Contractors are using Bedrock’s platform to test how autonomous equipment can support real-world operations at scale, particularly in earthmoving tasks that demand precision and consistency.

From a business standpoint, the Series B funding will allow Bedrock to expand both its technology and its customer deployments. The company has also strengthened its leadership team with senior hires from Meta and Waymo, deepening its focus on AI evaluation, safety and operational growth. Bedrock says it is targeting its first fully operator-less excavator deployments with customers in 2026—a milestone for autonomy in complex construction equipment.

In that context, this round is not just about capital. It is about giving Bedrock the runway to prove that autonomous systems can move from controlled pilots into everyday use on job sites. The company bets that the future of construction will be shaped less by individual machines—and more by coordinated, intelligent systems that work alongside human crews.