Insider Brief
- Foundry has announced an $80M funding from Sequoia Capital, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and others to create a public cloud specifically for AI/ML workloads, aiming to maximize the utility of global compute capacity.
- Founded by alumni from DeepMind and Stanford, Foundry addresses the challenges of AI infrastructure, like GPU shortages and under-utilization of compute capacity, by offering scalable GPU instances with superior price-performance ratios to a wide range of users from enterprises to academic institutions.
- The funding will enable Foundry to enhance its operations and product offerings, aiming to become the leading AI/ML infrastructure platform that ensures efficient use of computing resources for societal benefit.
PRESS RELEASE — PALO ALTO, Calif. /March 21, 2024— (BUSINESS WIRE) — Today, Foundry, a new breed of public cloud for AI/ML workloads, announced $80M in seed and Series A funding to orchestrate the world’s compute capacity, rendering it universally accessible and useful. The round was co-led by Sequoia Capital and Lightspeed Venture Partners, with participation from Redpoint, Microsoft Ventures (M12), Conviction, NEA, and other leading technical and commercial minds from the industry. Foundry is building to ensure humanity maximizes the utility of the computing power we already have, and will produce.
Shaun Maguire, partner at Sequoia Capital, on why he led the seed and co-led the Series A rounds of Foundry: “Building AI infrastructure is uniquely relevant right now and highly complex to build, requiring profound technical expertise in areas traditionally seen as separate, like; deep learning, distributed systems, the economics of energy, finance, as well as market theory and mechanism design. What Jared and the team at Foundry are building is at the forefront of innovation in the world of public clouds for AI/ML workloads and will deeply influence the ecosystem for years to come.”
Founded by alumni from DeepMind’s core Deep Learning Team and Stanford’s CS PhD program (a group led by Databricks co-founder Matei Zaharia), Foundry tackles the core economic and technical challenges in AI and deep learning. Some of the difficulties faced by companies today, such as the widely mentioned GPU shortage and the under-utilization of compute capacity, prevent them from effectively utilizing their compute resources. Foundry’s innovative methods are solving these issues by providing scalable GPU instances with unmatched price-performance ratios. Early adopters range from large enterprises such as KKR and LG to prestigious academic institutions like Stanford and MIT, to prominent AI startups through cluster partnerships with Lightspeed and Pear VC.
Foundry’s founder and CEO, Jared Quincy Davis, stated that “AI accelerator compute is arguably the most critical resource in civilization today, so the bottlenecks here reverberate broadly. While the much-discussed GPU shortage is part of the challenge we face, it’s not the only issue. Arguably, the industry suffers vastly more from under-utilization than from under-supply. The work we are doing at Foundry is addressing this from multiple angles.”
“Arc has very high performance infrastructure needs for computational biology, and Foundry delivers,” said Alden Woodrow, COO of Arc Institute, a scientific research organization dedicated to the study of complex human disease. “Foundry manages to combine perfect uptime and compelling economics with exceptionally fast execution, which allows us to accelerate our development of state of the art foundation models.”
“The AI revolution has set off a global search for far greater computing power, and it’s only the beginning,” said Raviraj Jain, Partner at Lightspeed. “Foundry is filling a huge gap by helping any company achieve flexibility and scalability in computing pricing and power to bring their AI products to scale and usher in the AI era.”
This funding will allow Foundry to expand its operations, improve its product offerings, and establish more strategic partnerships. The company aims to create the ultimate AI/ML infrastructure platform that maximizes the use of compute, a critical and impactful resource, for the benefit of society. If you are interested in becoming a customer or partner, or joining the team, please visit the company’s website.
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