Tel Aviv-based startup Factify emerged from stealth today with a $73 million seed round for an ambitious, yet quick mission: to bring digital documents beyond the standard formats used by most businesses — .pdf, .docx, collaborative cloud files like Google Docs — and into the intelligence age.
For Factify founder and CEO Matan Gavish, it’s not just a software upgrade — it’s an imperative he’s been obsessed with for years.
"PDF was developed when I was in elementary school," Gavish told VentureBeat. "The basis of the software ecosystem hasn’t really evolved… someone has to redesign the digital document."
Gavish, a tenured professor of computer science and Stanford PhD, admits that his fixation on administrative file formats is an anomaly for someone with his credentials.
"It is a very useless problem to suffer from," He says. "Given the fact that my educational background is AI and machine learning, my mother wanted me to start an AI company because it’s cool. I’m not sure why I’m obsessed and obsessed with documents."
But that passion has now attracted a big seed round led by Valley Capital Partners and backed by AI veterans like former Google AI chief John Giannandrea.
The bet is simple, the static rigidity of most digital files limits their usefulness, and a better, more intelligent document that actually shares its edit history and ownership with users is not only possible – it is a multi-billion dollar opportunity.
History of Digital Documents
To understand why a seed round would reach $73 million, you have to understand the scale of the business. There are currently an estimated three trillion PDFs in circulation. "Some people watch PDF more than their children," Gavish jokes.
The history of the digital document is not a linear progression where one format replaces another. Instead, it’s a story "species," Where different formats evolved to fill different ecological niches: creation, distribution and collaboration.
The Age of Files: Microsoft Word (1980–1990)
Digital documents began as isolated artifacts. In the 1980s, "document" Inextricably linked to the hardware that created it. A file created in WordPerfect on a DOS machine was effectively unintelligible to a Macintosh user.
Microsoft Word, which traces its lineage back to Xerox PARC’s pioneering WYSIWYG editors, changed this by taking advantage of the dominance of the Windows operating system. By the 1990s, the binary .doc format became the default container for editable business documents. However, these files were structurally complex "memory dump" Designed for the limited hardware of the time, it often led to corruption or privacy leaks, where deleted text remained hidden in the file’s binary data.
The Digital ‘Stone’ Age: PDF (1990-2006)
PDF did not originate as a writing tool; It was a tool for seeing. In 1991, Adobe co-founder John Warnock wrote "Camelot Project" White Paper, Spec A "digital envelope" Which will look the same on any display or printer.
Unlike Word files, which were malleable, PDFs were designed to be immutable. They used PostScript imaging models to place characters at precise coordinates while ensuring visual fidelity. Although adoption was slow initially, Adobe’s decision to release Acrobat Reader for free in 1994 established PDF as a global standard. "digital concrete"-Format of finality used for contracts, government forms and archives.
Collaborative Cloud Docs era (2006–present)
In 2006, Google disrupted the model again by moving documents from the hard drive to the browser. using the "operational changes" Algorithmically, Google Docs allowed multiple users to edit the same stream of text simultaneously.
This changed the paradigm "sending a file" To "Sharing a link." While Google Workspace now claims more than 3 billion users (mostly consumers and education), it has fundamentally changed the way we work – turning documents into living, collaborative processes rather than static artifacts.
Status Quo: Fragmentation
Despite these advances, the business world remains fragmented. We draft in Google Docs (the "digital stream"), formats in Word (the "digital soil"), and sign in PDF (the "digital stone").
But this fragmentation has a price. "The problem isn’t the document. Everything is around it," The company notes. "Once a PDF leaves your system, control is lost. Versions flow away. Access is unclear. Nothing is visible."
Transforming digital documents into intelligent infrastructure
Factify claims that in the age of AI, this fragmentation is no longer just annoying – it is a serious failure. AI models require structured, verifiable data to function.
When an A.I. "reads" A PDF, it essentially guesses, uses optical character recognition to effectively scrape text from a digital photo.
"What we’re dealing with here is a megalomaniacal approach, but at the same time it’s probably something that’s inevitable," Gavish says.
Factify’s solution is to treat documents not as static files, but as intelligent infrastructure. In "factual" Standard, a document has a mind of its own. It has a unique identity, a live permissions system, and an immutable audit log that runs with it.
"We’ve written a new document format that replaces PostScript," Gavish explains. "We have created a new data layer that supports the document as a first-class citizen… and it is always available inside the organization and potentially outside."
This interoperability between file and API is the core of the company’s concept."
- The files are liabilities: They are stored, lost and can be stolen. "It goes back to brick state," Gavish says. "Files are liabilities, if anything, because they’re just stored there, you have to protect them."
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The API properties are: Factify document is an active object. You can ask questions to: "Who has seen you? When does your period end? Are you on the most updated version?"
‘People don’t change’, but formats do
History is full of formats that tried to replace PDF (such as Microsoft’s XPS). They failed because they demanded too much behavior change from users. Gavish is well aware of this trap.
"When I talk to enterprise software entrepreneurs, I tell them the two laws to know about starting a company in enterprise software are that people don’t care, and no one changes," He says.
To avoid this, Factify has built in deep backward compatibility. A factual document can look exactly like a PDF, including page breaks and margins. Users don’t need to learn a new interface to get value; They simply need to solve a specific problem – like an executive who wants to ensure that an investment memorandum cannot be forwarded.
"All he has to say to his team is, ‘Dear Chief of Staff, employment agreements and investment memoranda… are going to be factual. Continue the rest,’" Gavish says. "They see immediate benefits… but then they realize they’ve crossed the Rubicon."
What’s next for Factify?
The capital from this round will be used to deepen the core engineering of the platform – which Gavish describes as "heavy engineering lift" They require reinventing the document format, data layer, and application layer. The company is also establishing a major operations center in Pittsburgh to support its US expansion.
Ultimately, Factify isn’t trying to create another collaboration tool like Google Docs. They’re trying to create the standard for an immutable record of the future. "Truth" In a digital world.
"PDF… has become a standard which means I can’t file my taxes using any other format. This is what victory looks like," Gavish says. "We are creating a documentation standard that is not specific to health care or insurance, but just as documentation."
As for the three trillion static files currently residing in cloud storage, the writing may finally be on the wall.
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