Insider Brief
- FlexAI, a Paris-based startup focused on universal AI compute, announced its launch with $30 million in seed funding from investors including Alpha Intelligence Capital, Elaia Partners, and Heartcore Capital.
- The company aims to rearchitect compute infrastructure to accelerate AI advancements by making it more accessible and efficient for developers through an on-demand cloud service.
- The company addresses key challenges in AI development, such as compute supply bottlenecks, global skills shortages, and the complexity of building and deploying AI models.
PRESS RELEASE — PARIS/April 24, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — 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 Contact
US: LaunchSquad for FlexAI
flexai@launchsquad.com
France: Victoire Rivaton
victoire.rivaton.ext@flex.ai
