FlexAI Launches with $30 Million in Seed Funding to Deliver Universal AI Compute
April 24 2024 - 6:00AM
FlexAI, the universal AI compute company, today launched with $30
million (€28.5 million) in seed funding led by Alpha Intelligence
Capital (AIC), Elaia Partners, and Heartcore Capital. The company
is rearchitecting compute infrastructure to accelerate
world-changing breakthroughs made possible by advancements in AI.
FlexAI unlocks access to more compute and increased efficiency,
with less complexity for developers. Delivered as an on-demand
cloud service, FlexAI’s universal AI compute allows developers to
seamlessly build and train AI applications with heterogeneous
compute architectures.
FlexAI addresses the three biggest obstacles inhibiting AI
innovation: a compute supply bottleneck, a global skills shortage,
and complex, unreliable processes for building and deploying AI
models. The company is building an entirely new layer of software
intelligence, abstraction, and orchestration into the AI compute
stack, enabling developers to utilize multiple hardware
configurations without arduous code changes. This expands access to
compute, efficiently runs AI workloads at lower costs than
traditional GPU clusters, and makes it easier to build AI
applications.
“We believe in AI's transformative power to solve some of
humanity’s biggest problems, but it will require a 1000x magnitude
more compute to be able to realize this vision,” said Brijesh
Tripathi, CEO and co-founder of FlexAI. “The availability of AI
compute today is limited to a select few. Our vision is to unlock
access to compute for the many.”
FlexAI works with hardware leaders and cloud providers across
the AI ecosystem, including AMD, Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud,
Intel, and NVIDIA, as well as key companies developing AI models
and products. Later this year, the company will unveil its first
commercial product: an on-demand cloud service that connects
developers to virtual heterogeneous compute, enabling them to run
their workloads on a variety of architectures to build and deploy
AI models reliably and efficiently.
“AI is advancing in more directions than our current compute
ecosystem can support,” said Jim Keller, CEO of Tenstorrent and
FlexAI board member. “FlexAI has created a novel technology that
opens access to diverse compute, supports a wide range of
workloads, and accelerates innovation across the industry.”
Founded and led by ex-Apple, Intel, NVIDIA, Tesla, Lifen, and
Zoox veterans Brijesh Tripathi and Dali Kilani, the FlexAI team
combines deep experience in both hardware and software to build
full-stack solutions to the AI compute crisis. In addition to Alpha
Intelligence Capital (AIC), Elaia Partners, and Heartcore Capital,
investors in FlexAI include Bpifrance, Frst Capital, Motier
Ventures, Partech, and InstaDeep CEO Karim Beguir.
"Compute is lagging, not leading, AI models' increasingly potent
capabilities. To deliver on AI's potential, the industry has to
solve the issue of compute costs and that of stack complexity --
both of which dramatically increase development costs and time to
market. Brijesh and Dali, uniquely, have the hardware and software
skill sets to architect and build the ecosystem for the AI compute
orchestration layer," said Antoine Blondeau, Managing Partner at
Alpha Intelligence Capital. "This is our second fund's first
investment in France. FlexAI's choice of Paris as its headquarters
illustrates the vibrancy of the French AI ecosystem, with the
presence of a first-rate scientific base, world-class founders,
and, increasingly, access to global capital, in turn enabling
global ambitions."
For more information, please visit Flex.ai.
About FlexAI FlexAI is delivering universal AI
compute by rearchitecting compute infrastructure at a system level.
The company has built a layer of software intelligence,
abstraction, and orchestration into the AI compute stack, enabling
developers to benefit from a diverse set of compute architectures
to train their models faster, more reliably, and at a fraction of
the cost of traditional GPU clusters. Headquartered in Paris, the
vibrant AI hub, FlexAI’s global team hails from Apple, Intel,
Lifen, NVIDIA, and Tesla. The company is backed by AIC, Elaia
Partners, Bpifrance, Frst Capital, Heartcore Capital, Motier
Ventures, Partech, and InstaDeep CEO, Karim Beguir.
For more information, please visit Flex.ai or follow us on
LinkedIn.
Media ContactUS: LaunchSquad for FlexAI
flexai@launchsquad.com
France: Victoire Rivatonvictoire.rivaton.ext@flex.ai