1. Should you try Iris.ai? Overview

What it is	Iris.ai — Agentic RAG Knowledge Foundation for Regulated R&D (Iris AI AS, Oslo) Not shut down.
Country / HQ	Oslo, Norway
Best for	Pharma/chem/materials/agri/energy R&D needing private-corpus Agentic RAG
Check before buying	Watch out: Grad students / solo academics (Elicit $49 + Semantic Scholar free)
Editor rating	3.5 / 5
Pricing signal	Free tier + paid

2. Features What it does

Feature	What it does
Discovery	RMap visual concept clustering from 300-word problem desc, citation-count-agnostic — Surfaces non-keyword matches (“unknown unknowns”)
Screening	Focus tool: 10k papers → inclusion/exclusion logic → 50–100 set — Replaces title/abstract screen
Extraction	Autonomous table + prose data extraction (params, populations, doses) → structured DB — Source-linked, hallucination-detected
Agentic RAG	Multi-step workflows: patent monitoring, competitor scouting, cross-doc Q&A with traceability — Axion+Neuralith+RSpace stack
Workspace	Researcher Workspace, reading lists, team share, versioned reviews — Explorer=basic, Researcher=full RSpace
Deploy	Private cloud / on-prem Clean Room, model-agnostic (BYO GPT-4/Claude/open weights), ISO 27001, GDPR, EU-sovereign — Enterprise only
Integrate	Sales-led connectors: SAP/Oracle/SharePoint/Box/Veeva/PubMed/Scopus/WoS — no off-the-shelf MCP

Plan	Price / mo	Key limits & who it fits
No free tier	—	G2 pulled 2026; no trial/freemium
Explorer	Custom (quote)	Individual researchers, basic smart search, limited uploads, community support
Researcher	Custom (quote)	RSpace full, advanced filters, autonomous extraction, auto-summaries
Enterprise	Custom (annual, often 6-fig)	Private cloud/on-prem, Agentic Multi-RAG, Veeva/SAP/SharePoint, SSO, eval frameworks, priority support

Access type	Details
Access	access_type: web-app-plus-api-no-self-serve-no-mobile access_display: 🌐 iris.ai web workspace · 🔌 REST API (enterprise, scoping-led) · no MCP server · no desktop · no mobile app · no self-serve signup

Source	Rating	What it says
AI Agent Index	3.5/5 — “regulated-enterprise RAG done right; pricing clarity 2/5, setup 1/5, evidence 4/5; USDA/Mercedes/NATO NCIA logos”
CostBench	“3 quoted tiers, no free, 6 hidden costs (impl/training/addons), contracts auto-renew”
AIToolsAtlas	“purpose-built science NLP beats GPT on chem/patent text; enterprise-only excludes individuals”
DevOpsSchool	7.8/10 vs Elicit 8.2 / Semantic Scholar 8.7 — “discovery strong, deep-review workflows need Elicit pair”

✔ Suitable	✘ Not suitable
• Pharma/chem/materials/agri/energy R&D needing private-corpus Agentic RAG • Regulated orgs (USDA, Mercedes, ArcelorMittal, L’Oréal) with Veeva/SAP/SharePoint • Patent scouting / competitor tech monitoring teams • EU-sovereign AI buyers avoiding US-model dependency • Systematic-review labs wanting audit trail + extraction tables	• Grad students / solo academics (Elicit $49 + Semantic Scholar free) • Humanities/social-science/law reviewing (citation-graph tools fit better) • Casual “summarize this PDF” users (Scholarcy/Scite/ChatGPT) • Teams without data-eng capacity to scope connectors • Startups watching burn (sales-led 6-fig annuals)

Competitor	How it differs	Best for
Elicit	Self-serve academic systematic review, structured extraction	Free / $49-mo
Semantic Scholar	Free 200M-paper discovery + TLDR + API	$0
Scite	Smart Citations (support/contradict), citation context	$20–50-mo
Consensus	Evidence-Q&A across papers	$0–45-mo
Causaly	Biomed knowledge graph, drug-discovery focus	Enterprise custom
ChatGPT Deep Research	Open-web agentic research, no private RAG	$20-mo
Gemini Deep Research	Google-stack research agent	$19.99-mo
Microsoft Copilot Studio	Broad enterprise agent build, not science-specific	Seat-based

Who should pick it	Pharma/chem/materials/agri/energy R&D needing private-corpus Agentic RAG
Who should skip it	Grad students / solo academics (Elicit $49 + Semantic Scholar free)