One startup’s pitch to provide more reliable AI answers: crowdsource the chatbots

John Davie wanted Buyers Edge Platform, the hospitality purchasing company he founded and still runs, to benefit from the AI ​​wave. Looking around, the CEO wasn’t satisfied with the options.

The answer was CollectiveIQa Boston-based company founded on Buyers Edge Platform that gives users more accurate answers to their AI questions by showing them answers that pull information from ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Grok – and up to ten other models – all at the same time.

When new AI tools hit the market a few years ago, Davie told TechCrunch he was excited about the potential and encouraged his employees to try them out. His optimism was short-lived.

“About a year ago, we had a wake-up call when we learned that if our employees were just using different AI tools, or even their own license, this could be training in our business intelligence,” Davie said. “We could actually give our competitor an edge.”

Davie investigated more secure AI contracts for enterprises and discovered expensive long-term contracts for large language models that produced inaccurate information and hallucinations.

“We hated having to decide which employees deserved AI,” he says. “What made matters worse was that employees complained about bogus, biased answers. Sometimes we got flat, incorrect answers that ended up in PowerPoint presentations and cover presentations.”

He challenged his Chief Technology Officer to build something better.

The result was CollectivIQ. The spinout created a tool that simultaneously queries several major language models, including those from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google and xAI. The software looks for overlapping and different information to produce a merged answer that should be more accurate than the answer produced by each LLM individually.

All data involved in CollectivIQ prompts is encrypted and deleted after use to maintain enterprise-level privacy, the company claimed.

“As someone who simply loves technology, you’re always looking for the best of the best, right?” David said. “You always want to have the latest, greatest iPhone, laptop or tool and I wanted to give my employees the best of the best of AI, but there was really nothing you knew that would bring them all together in one.”

CollectivIQ started rolling out the software internally to its employees in early 2026. The initial reactions were strong, Davie said. When Davie learned that many Buyers Edge Platform customers were dealing with the same confusion or hesitation around adopting AI tools, the company decided to release it to the public.

The software is built using AI model enterprise APIs. CollectivIQ pays for the token fees and its customers pay based on usage, which Davie hopes will help the company stand out in a crowded enterprise AI market.

“I hope this is a relief for companies who realize they don’t have to commit,” Davie said. “They are only going to pay for the value they get out of it.”

CollectivIQ was fully funded by Davie, who told TechCrunch he plans to seek external capital later this year. For Davie, it was fun to build another startup almost 28 years after he launched his current company.

“It feels like a long time ago and we’re doing it all over again and being sloppy and very confused about LLMs and post training and all kinds of things that I’m not trained in,” Davie said. “It’s fun and exciting. I get to sit hand in hand with the software developers who build the product, that’s how I got my main company, it’s a lot of fun.”