Latest news with #Centific
Yahoo
27-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Singapore VC Granite Asia leads $60 million funding round for AI ‘data foundry' Centific to fuel global expansion
The 'AI data foundry' Centific closed a $60 million Series A funding round led by the Singapore-based venture fund Granite Asia, as the U.S.-based startup explores an ambitious expansion to Asia. AI startups are now paying close attention to Asia as they search for new markets for their AI models. Local AI developers, such as China's DeepSeek, are showing that Asian AI models are sitting on the technological frontier. 'This funding round isn't about necessity; it's about ambition,' CEO Venkat Rangapuram said in a statement. 'This investment turbocharges our mission: to empower enterprises with AI systems that are resilient, agile, and meticulously fine-tuned.' Centific plans to use the funds to expand the functionality of its platform, improve its research and development, and deepen its collaboration with partners like Nvidia, Microsoft, and Lenovo. The AI startup works with larger businesses to develop, train, and deploy their AI, including trying to eliminate bias, hallucinations, and other mistakes. 'Unless the model is grounded in very specific scenarios and datasets, it can't really solve enterprise-related issues,' Rangapuram said in a conversation with Fortune. 'There's a whole lot of things that need to be thought about before you can go live in an enterprise setup.' Centific started as the U.S. division of Pactera, a Chinese IT consulting and outsourcing firm. After Chinese Electronics Corp., a Chinese state-owned company, acquired Pactera in 2020, it carved out the U.S. business, which eventually became an independent company. Rangapuram told Fortune that he was intrigued by the 'disruptive and exciting possibilities' of physical AI, particularly in ASEAN and Singapore. ('Physical AI' refers to models designed to work with real-world machinery, like manufacturing equipment.) 'The future is not just in North America, it's global,' he said. The wish to expand to new markets was why Centific turned to Granite Asia and famed venture capitalist (and MPW Asia listee) Jenny Lee, one of the fund's senior managing partners. Rangapuram pointed to Granite's 'network and resources within Asia and India' as part of the reason why he turned to Lee and her fund 'as we diversify from the North American market into alternate markets around the globe.' Granite Asia, in turn, sees the Centific investment as part of its mission to build 'enduring infrastructure for the future of industry,' Lee said in a statement accompanying the funding announcement. Centific 'is uniquely positioned to become a foundational partner in the enterprise AI stack.' Granite Asia was born from GGV Capital, a venture giant with deep roots in Asia. Lee set up GGV's first China office in 2005, and backed giants like Alibaba, Grab, and Xiaomi. Yet in 2023, following U.S. congressional scrutiny of venture investments in China, GGV decided to split itself into two, with its Asia-based business becoming Granite Asia. The fund has quickly built new relationships across the region. Late last year, it formed a strategic partnership with the Indonesia Investment Authority, one of Indonesia's sovereign wealth funds, to deploy $1.2 billion into investment opportunities. In March, it announced a new joint venture with Japanese private equity firm Integral to pool together $100 million into Japan's tech sector. Then on Tuesday, Granite Asia was one of two foreign VCs, alongside Taiwan's AppWorks, selected to take part in a new Malaysian initiative to invest in local startups and encourage global companies to redomicile in the Southeast Asian country. 'We always felt there was a lack of capital focus in Asia towards Asia companies,' Lee told Fortune in late October. 'Our vision is to become the dominant capital platform for startups, founders, and businesses across the region: capital for the region that's anchored in the region.' This story was originally featured on Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Geek Wire
26-06-2025
- Business
- Geek Wire
Centific, a Seattle-area AI services startup and Nvidia partner, lands $60M
GeekWire's startup coverage documents the Pacific Northwest entrepreneurial scene. Sign up for our weekly startup newsletter , and check out the GeekWire funding tracker and venture capital directory . Centific CEO Venkat Rangapuram. (LinkedIn Photo) Centific, a Redmond, Wash.-based startup founded in 2020 that helps organizations manage data pipelines to power advanced AI systems, raised $60 million in a Series A round led by Singaporean venture capitalist Jenny Lee of Granite Asia. Centific describes itself as the 'hidden infrastructure behind world-class AI models,' helping provide the foundational data pipelines for organizations pushing AI into production. The startup works with global leaders in smartphones, tablets, e-commerce, and software; it also collaborates with Nvidia, Microsoft, AWS, and other giants. 'Enterprises globally are moving from AI experimentation to enterprise-wide deployment, but the journey requires scale, trust, and deep integration with legacy systems,' Lee said in a statement. 'Centific is built for this moment.' Centific is led by CEO and co-founder Venkat Rangapuram, who previously worked at Pactera, HCL America, and Infosys. 'AI is evolving from isolated models to fully agentic systems that perceive, reason, and act at scale,' Rangapuram said in a statement. 'Our full-stack Data Foundry meets this moment by combining deep domain expertise, human-in-the-loop assurance, and true multimodal orchestration—all delivered with unmatched speed and scale.' Centific originally started as the U.S. division of Pactera, a China-based IT consulting company, according to Fortune. The company has nearly 3,000 employees, with a majority of its workforce in India, according to LinkedIn.
Globe and Mail
25-06-2025
- Business
- Globe and Mail
Centific, the Market-Leading Enabler of Advanced AI, Closes Transformative $60M Series A Round
Granite Asia invests in Centific's $60M Series A, led by Midas List investor Jenny Lee, to fuel the company's expansion as the independent AI data backbone for the next wave of global agentic AI systems.
Cision Canada
25-06-2025
- Business
- Cision Canada
Centific, the Market-Leading Enabler of Advanced AI, Closes Transformative $60M Series A Round USA - English USA - English USA
Granite Asia invests in Centific's $60M Series A, led by Midas List investor Jenny Lee, to fuel the company's expansion as the independent AI data backbone for the next wave of global agentic AI systems. SEATTLE, June 25, 2025 /CNW/ -- Centific, the AI Data Foundry trusted by the world's top model builders, AI labs, and enterprise innovators, today announced the close of its $60 million Series A funding round, led by long-time Midas Lister Jenny Lee of Granite Asia, an investment firm behind 56 unicorns and 31 IPOs globally. Founded in 2020, Centific has operated behind the scenes to power many of the world's most transformative AI breakthroughs. Today, the company equips innovators with the infrastructure, oversight and deep expertise required to develop and safely deploy foundational models, multimodal systems and next-generation agentic AI; intelligent platforms that perceive, reason and act at scale. Centific is a recognized innovation partner to NVIDIA, selected for its leadership in real-world Vision and Language AI inferencing. The company was recently featured by Jensen Huang at both CES and GTC as a leading innovation partner, underscoring its role in helping scale AI from prototype to production. "Enterprises globally are moving from AI experimentation to enterprise-wide deployment, but the journey requires scale, trust, and deep integration with legacy systems. Centific is built for this moment." Said Jenny Lee, Senior Managing Partner at Granite Asia." With its global delivery infrastructure, strong existing client base, and commitment to safe, responsible AI, it is uniquely positioned to become a foundational partner in the enterprise AI stack. At Granite Asia, we back the builders of enduring infrastructure for the future of industry, and Centific reflects that vision." Powering the Frontier of AI with safety, speed, and scale As organizations move beyond model training into large-scale, real-world AI applications, Centific delivers the technical sophistication, governance frameworks, and expert oversight required to succeed. "AI is evolving from isolated models to fully agentic systems that perceive, reason, and act at scale," said Venkat Rangapuram, CEO of Centific. "Our full-stack Data Foundry meets this moment by combining deep domain expertise, human-in-the-loop assurance, and true multimodal orchestration—all delivered with unmatched speed and scale." A future-ready platform for real-world AI Centific's AI Data Foundry brings together a global network of experts across 1000's of domains in STEM, vertical and professional, and consumer and lifestyle, human-in-the-loop assurance with built-in QA checkpoints and escalation paths to eliminate bias, hallucinations, and failures, true multimodal orchestration supporting complex prompts across text, image, video, audio, 3D, and spatial data, and unmatched speed and scalability to deploy, localize, and contextualize AI at the enterprise, citywide, and national levels. Centific's AI Data Foundry integrates every component organizations need to power safe, scalable agentic AI deployments: Infrastructure-Agnostic Deployment: Scale models seamlessly across cloud, core, edge, and far-edge environments to deliver truly transformational experiences High-Precision Model Training: Workflow-orchestrated datasets fine-tune LLMs and domain-specific agents with unparalleled accuracy Optimized AI Inferencing: Low-latency, high-assurance pipelines for perception-based Vision and Language AI in production Agentic AI Experiences: Digital twins, avatars, and multi-agent coordination that bring Physical AI to life Governance & Risk Mitigation: Human-in-the-loop validation, synthetic-data controls, and audit-ready compliance workflows integrated at every stage Trusted by the Magnificent Seven, top model labs, and Fortune 500 organizations, Centific's Data Foundry provides a secure, repeatable infrastructure that keeps pace with rapid innovation while minimizing operational and regulatory risk. Deploying capital to drive next-gen AI innovation With this foundation in place, Centific is channeling this new capital into four key areas: Expand Functionality & Capabilities: Enhance our platform to accelerate the journey from prototype to production; delivering resilient, agile systems finely tuned for real-world impact. Supercharge R&D Frontiers: Continue research and innovation programs fueling breakthroughs and pushing the frontiers of model architectures, Vision AI, and specialized AI; driving cutting-edge advancements. Scale the Enterprise AI Backbone: Cement Centific's position as the foundational partner; powering mission-critical AI deployments at the speed of innovation. Amplify Strategic Ecosystem Alliances: Deepen collaborations with NVIDIA, Microsoft, AWS, Dell, Lenovo, and GPU-as-a-Service leaders; driving global adoption. "This funding round isn't about necessity, it's about ambition. Having trained most the world's leading AI models, our Zero Distance Innovation™ ethos now pivots to enterprise impact, unlocking industries' ability to deploy safe, scalable AI at speed and scale." said Venkat Rangapuram, CEO of Centific. "With significant interest from top-tier firms, we selected Granite Asia for their unrivaled track record in scaling early-stage tech innovators. Built profitably on a foundation of trust and global reach, this investment turbocharges our mission: to empower enterprises with AI systems that are resilient, agile, and meticulously fine-tuned." Looking ahead As demand for sovereign, secure, and scalable agentic AI infrastructure surges, Centific is perfectly poised to lead the charge. The company envisions AI evolving into an unseen yet indispensable layer of everyday life. Fueled by this vision, Centific is building a unified ecosystem, bringing together world-class talent, robust platforms, and cutting-edge technology, to power the next generation of AI-driven innovation. Centific powers the world's most advanced AI. As the trusted data and infrastructure partner for thousands of production-grade systems, Centific empowers innovators to scale models and agents across the full lifecycle—faster, safer, and with expert oversight. From perception-based inferencing to HITL-evaluated datasets, Centific is the backbone for the future of AI.
Associated Press
19-03-2025
- Business
- Associated Press
Centific and mimik partner to revolutionize AI-powered smart spaces with edge intelligence
OAKLAND, Calif., March 19, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Centific, a frontier AI data foundry platform company accelerating businesses' AI and mimik, a leader in device-first continuum AI (DFC-AI), today announced a strategic partnership to introduce a groundbreaking AI-powered smart space solution. By integrating mimik's edge-native agentic runtime with Centific's AI frontier AI data foundry platform, the collaboration brings an unprecedented level of real-time video intelligence, cost efficiency, and data privacy. This new paradigm unlocks proactive threat detection, behavioral insights, and scalable multi-camera AI processing without the traditional reliance on centralized cloud infrastructure. This partnership sets a new standard for edge-enabled AI in smart spaces. The Centific-mimik solution pioneers an adaptive compute continuum, dynamically distributing AI workloads across edge devices, servers, and private cloud environments based on operational needs. This edge-first strategy eliminates cloud latency, reduces bandwidth overhead, and helps ensure AI-driven insights are context-aware, responsive, and secure within an organization's operational framework. By leveraging mimik's scalable Open Edge (OE) platform alongside Centific's frontier AI data foundry platform, the solution enables: Federated AI processing across thousands of cameras with minimized data movement, optimizing edge execution. Hybrid cloud integration to balance real-time decision-making at the edge with deeper analytics in secure cloud environments. Autonomous AI agents leveraging multimodal video-linguistic AI models to provide proactive situational awareness. Event-driven intelligence that enhances security and operational efficiency without dependency on constant connectivity. Centific's frontier AI data foundry platform elevates edge AI capabilities Centific's frontier AI data foundry platform plays a critical role in optimizing AI-driven video intelligence by: Supporting 100s of use cases across industries with adaptable AI workflows and multi-model processing. Leveraging 100+ pre-configured templates for rapid and efficient data extraction, localization, and contextualization. Addressing data scarcity and privacy concerns by generating realistic synthetic datasets. Helping to ensure data integrity with AI-driven validation and human-in-the-loop (HITL) oversight in quality assurance processes. Enforcing safe AI practices with data privacy and compliance mechanisms on a global scale. Providing enterprise-ready AI models that maximize performance and minimize costs through advancements in LLM fine-tuning and model optimization. Centific's frontier AI data foundry platform integrates seamlessly with mimik's edge intelligence platform, helping to ensure that AI models remain contextually adaptive, continuously refined, and efficiently deployed across diverse environments. 'At Centific,' said Venkat Rangapuram, CEO of Centific, 'we are committed to harnessing AI to create safer communities by making AI-driven solutions more accessible and affordable across all devices. Our collaboration with mimik reinforces this vision, bringing edge intelligence and real-time AI analytics to the forefront of public safety. By leveraging our frontier AI data foundry platform-driven approach, we can help ensure that AI is not only scalable and cost-effective but also privacy-conscious and contextually adaptive. This marks a new era where organizations can deploy intelligent security solutions with heightened situational awareness while reducing infrastructure costs. Together, we are making AI work for everyone, everywhere.' 'mimik's DFC-AI is transforming enterprise AI deployments,' added Fay Arjomandi, Founder & CEO of mimik. 'By harnessing the power of edge intelligence and federated AI, we enable organizations to execute agentic AI workloads efficiently, even in connectivity-limited environments.' This partnership is the future of AI-powered smart spaces This partnership marks a pivotal shift in AI-driven security and public safety. By reducing reliance on cloud infrastructure and leveraging intelligent edge computing, organizations can now deploy scalable, privacy-conscious AI systems that operate with heightened situational awareness and reduced operational costs. About Centific: Centific lives at the forefront of AI innovation, specializing in platform-driven solutions that transform raw data into fuel for the future of AI. By elevating data quality and accelerating AI deployments, Centific empowers businesses to build smarter, safer, and more scalable AI solutions. The company's commitment to collaboration spans academia, industry, and technology, with a focus on sustainable practices that address real-world needs. Join Centific in redefining the AI landscape at and follow us on LinkedIn. About mimik: mimik is for Agentix Native, the 5th Element of AI. We have solved the most complex challenges in AI software, including AI Continuum on Continuum Compute, Parallel AI, and the Network Offline-First Distributed Dynamic Agentic Service Mesh Problem. Our technology enables seamless, scalable, and efficient agentic workflows, automation, and autonomous decision-making across all compute layers. By accelerating AI adoption and enabling intelligent workflow operations, mimik ensures enterprises maintain full control, security, and efficiency. With Zero-Trust Security and optimized operational efficiency in both energy and cost, businesses can scale AI while staying resilient and adaptable in an ever-evolving digital landscape. mimik, Your ROI for AI.
