Following the funding round led by Sure Valley Ventures, Inspeq AI plans to grow its applied AI, data science and full stack development teams.
Inspeq AI, a start-up that graduated from the Founders programme in Dogpatch Labs, has raised $1.1m for its platform that helps businesses deploy generative AI in their operations.
Founded by Apoorva Kumar and Ramanujam Macharla Vijayakumar, who have previously worked at major tech companies including Microsoft, Meta, Amazon and LinkedIn, Inspeq aims to address AI performance issues throughout the LLM (large language model) development cycle, ensuring safety and ethical compliance.
The founders said the platform reduces security and hallucination issues by up to 80pc thanks to extensive “metrics and guardrails” created by them. The objective is to bring down the cost of AI development while significantly enhancing its speed.
“Recent cases of production-grade generative AI applications going wrong have highlighted the challenges businesses face in scaling generative AI. By using Inspeq AI as an ops [operations] layer, businesses can overcome these bottlenecks, ensuring trust, safety and ethical standards,” said CEO Kumar.
“We are thrilled to be working with significant enterprise companies globally like HCL, helping them develop production-grade generative AI applications that deliver immense benefits to their customers.”
Following the funding round, which was led by Sure Valley Ventures, Inspeq AI plans to grow its applied AI, data science and full stack development teams. It will also expand its operations across Ireland, London and India (where the founders are originally from).
“We are collaborating closely with the likes of Pocket FM – a platform transforming audio entertainment with audio series, and are helping reduce their manual verification tasks, achieving accurate content delivery at scale,” added CTO Vijayakumar. “As AI regulations grow globally, Inspeq is well-positioned to lead AI compliance for DevOps practices.”
Other backers of the round include Delta Partners, Founders by Dogpatch Labs, Plug and Play, and several angel investors from multinational companies who have an interest in AI.
“After our first meeting with Apoorva and Ramanujam , we knew right away that they were the sort of founders we wanted to back,” said Barry Downes, managing partner of Sure Valley Ventures.
“Their knowledge of the AI space was extremely impressive, as was their commitment to ensuring that companies develop and use AI in a positive and constructive way. We look forward to working alongside our co-investors to support Inspeq on their exciting growth journey for many years ahead.”
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