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why-asktable

The Birth of AskTable​

Hello, we are AskTable.​

As a startup team in the technology field, we have always been thinking: Why can't we search and analyze our Excel files and databases, which are structured data, as simply and quickly as searching the web?

Data Dilemmas Across Industries​

Through our communication with numerous enterprises and institutions, we deeply understand the challenges they face when dealing with structured data:

  • A human resources service company in Hunan (with daily active users of tens of millions): receives thousands of Excel files each day with inconsistent formats, such as mismatched headers and merged cells. Currently, everything is handled manually, and automation is urgently needed.
  • A top accounting firm in Beijing: obtains a large amount of structured data from customer finance and ERP systems, stored in Excel. They want to quickly find numbers and improve efficiency.
  • A middle school in Tianjin: student information and teacher schedules are scattered across many Excel files. Manually processing data is tedious and inefficient. For example, when summarizing data for the entire school, it's necessary to manually consolidate Excel files submitted by each grade.
  • A new energy listed company in Jiangsu: provides integrated software and hardware solutions and plans to integrate AI queries into their self-developed SaaS platform, reducing repetitive code writing and saving manpower.
  • A Fortune 500 company in Shandong: business managers frequently query data. Although they have a data middleware and dashboards, only a few people are capable of using them, as this requires writing complex SQL and understanding data warehouse fields. Creating a dashboard usually takes several days, seriously affecting decision-making efficiency, especially when secondary queries are needed. This group plans to solve this issue through AI in the next three years.
  • A financial services company in Beijing: provides advance payment services to merchants, and some operational data is stored in Alibaba Cloud RDS database. They expect to directly retrieve data through AI to support business decisions and customer inquiries.

The search and utilization of structured data has become an unavoidable "essential path" for industries to accelerate operational efficiency.

Where Is the Way Out​

Faced with these challenges, we believe that AI is the key we are looking for. However, common AI knowledge bases or AI searches mainly target natural language texts, excelling at handling documents like Word, PDF, web pages, and emails, such as legal provisions and product manuals. But when it comes to structured data like Excel or databases, they often fall short.

Users' expectations are simple: whether it's Word or Excel, they hope for the same ease of use. This gap between ideal and reality is where we focus our efforts.

We always believe that enabling AI to understand structured data is the critical turning point from "interesting" to "useful."

The Birth of AskTable​

To fill this gap, I and my team founded AskTable.

  • "Ask" represents the iconic way of interaction in the new AI era - asking questions.
  • "Table" represents structured data, such as Feishu spreadsheets, Excel, MySQL, ClickHouse data warehouses, etc.

Our mission is: Let everyone be able to easily search and utilize their structured data just like using Baidu or Google.

Our Positioning​

Through the latest AI search technology, AskTable can understand users' natural language queries, automatically generate data query instructions, and directly provide results. This not only lowers the usage barrier but also significantly improves work efficiency. AskTable expands the boundaries of search from web pages, documents, images, and videos to strongly structured data such as Excel and databases.

For example, based on AskTable, we are designing an AI archive for Excel users - 0Excel.com, which, based on AskTable's technology, can find the required data from thousands of Excel files in just 10 seconds.

Throughout our development, we have always adhered to the principle of "focusing on core areas and not reinventing the wheel":

  • We do not provide AI models, but will integrate/micro-tune suitable large models to offer users the best experience.
  • We do not build a general AI Agent platform, but can embed our Table Agent within partners' platforms.
  • We do not provide databases, but empower users and developers to access and utilize their own data.

Outlook​

As enterprises enter deeper waters in AI applications, they must face a large amount of structured data. There is a huge market demand for convenient and efficient structured data search. We believe that the future way of working will change because of AskTable. Making it easy and equal for everyone to access the data and insights they need is our eternal goal.

Welcome to Join Us​

  • ALL in LLM: We are devout believers of LLMs, avoiding complex system designs and striving to maximize the potential of LLMs.
  • Business First: We focus on the implementation of LLMs in specific business scenarios, focusing on the implementation of upper-level applications.
  • Security: We believe in the capabilities of open-source models and seek the best local deployment solutions.

We sincerely invite you, who are full of passion and creativity in the AI field, to contact us, exchange ideas, or join us to create the future of artificial intelligence together!

You can contact us by submitting your information on the official website (AskTable.com)～