John Davie, the founder and current leader of Buyers Edge Platform, a prominent hospitality procurement enterprise, sought to harness the power of the AI revolution for his company. However, his initial survey of existing solutions left the CEO unsatisfied with the available options.
The solution emerged as CollectivIQ, a Boston-based venture incubated within Buyers Edge Platform. This innovative company empowers users to obtain more precise responses to their AI queries by simultaneously drawing information from a diverse array of models, including ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Grok, and up to ten other advanced AI systems.
A few years prior, when novel AI tools began to proliferate, Davie conveyed to TechCrunch his excitement about their potential, encouraging his employees to experiment with them. Yet, this initial optimism proved to be short-lived.
“We had a bit of a wake-up call about a year ago when we learned that if our employees are just using any various AI tools, or even their own license, it could be training on our company information,” Davie stated. He further warned, “We could be essentially edging our competitor.”
Davie then investigated more secure enterprise AI contracts but encountered expensive, long-term commitments for large language models that frequently delivered inaccurate information and exhibited "hallucinations."
“We hated having to decide which employees deserved AI,” he remarked. “What really made it worse, employees were complaining about hallucinated, biased answers. Sometimes it was really giving us flat, incorrect answers that made their way into PowerPoint presentations and cover presentations.”
Driven by these frustrations, he challenged his chief technology officer to develop a superior alternative.
The outcome was CollectivIQ, a spinout that engineered a tool capable of querying multiple large language models—including those from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and xAI—concurrently. The software intelligently cross-references overlapping and divergent information to generate a synthesized answer, designed to be significantly more accurate than responses from individual LLMs.
To ensure enterprise-grade privacy, CollectivIQ asserts that all data associated with its prompts is encrypted and subsequently deleted after each use.
“As somebody who just loves technology, you’re always looking for the best of the best, right?” Davie questioned. “You always want to have the latest, greatest iPhone or laptop or tool and I wanted to give my employees the best of the best of AI, but there was really nothing out there that you know would bring them all together into one.”
CollectivIQ commenced its internal software rollout to employees at the beginning of 2026, receiving a strong initial reception, according to Davie. Recognizing that many of Buyers Edge Platform’s clients faced similar confusion or hesitation regarding AI adoption, the company subsequently decided to make the solution publicly available.
The software was constructed utilizing AI model enterprise APIs. CollectivIQ covers the token costs, with customers paying based on usage—a strategy Davie hopes will differentiate the company in a competitive enterprise AI market.
“I’m hoping that this is a breath of fresh air for companies that see that they are not going to have to be committed,” Davie expressed. “They’re only going to pay for the value they get out of it.”
CollectivIQ has been entirely funded by Davie, who informed TechCrunch of his intent to seek external capital later this year. For Davie, returning to build a new startup nearly 28 years after launching his current company has been a thoroughly enjoyable experience.
“It does feel like way back in the day and we are doing it all over again and being scrappy and being very in the weeds on LLMs and post training and all sorts of things I was not trained in,” Davie reflected. “It’s fun and exciting. I go sit hand and hand with the software developers building the product, that’s how I got my main company, it’s a lot of fun.”
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