Latest news with #Cerebrium
Zawya
3 days ago
- Business
- Zawya
South Africa: Cerebrium raises $8.5mln led by gradient to scale the leading high-performance serverless AI platform
Cerebrium, a serverless AI infrastructure platform founded in Cape Town, has successfully raised $8.5 million in seed funding, led by Gradient, Google's AI venture fund. The round also saw participation from Y Combinator, Authentic Ventures, and several strategic angel investors and operators. This funding milestone marks a significant achievement for South African tech, with local founders securing backing from one of the most influential AI investors in the world. The company and its innovative AI platform are at the forefront of technical advancements that enable teams to develop and scale multimodal AI applications without the traditional complexity or costs typically associated with such efforts. Founded in Cape Town and now headquartered in New York City, Cerebrium plans to use this new funding to invest in new features and meet the increasing enterprise demand. Cerebrium was founded by Michael Louis and Jonathan Irwin, former CTO and Lead Engineer at OneCart, respectively. OneCart, a South African tech company, was acquired by MassMart in 2021, marking one of the largest tech acquisitions in South Africa at the time. After experiencing firsthand the challenges of building AI-driven products, Louis and Irwin launched Cerebrium. CEO and Co-Founder, Michael Louis, comments: 'Tooling was fragmented, there was an education gap between theory and production, the unit economics didn't make sense, and development cycles took months. We built Cerebrium so engineers can focus on building AI products that users love with real business impact, instead of hiring an infrastructure team, racking up six-figure cloud bills or worrying about security and compliance.' Cerebrium powers some of the most innovative companies pushing the boundaries in AI, including Tavus, Deepgram, Vapi, and many more. The platform is built for high-performance, real-time multimodal AI applications such as voice agents, LLM fine-tuning, video models, and large-scale data analytics. 'We know that AI is changing the world, and we want Cerebrium, a South African founded company, to be the platform powering it,' concludes Louis. Several industry stakeholders have spoken highly of Cerebrium's progress. Roey Paz-Priel, Machine Learning Engineer at Tavus, shares: 'We run a range of real-time audio and video models, and performance is everything. We tried a number of solutions, but Cerebrium consistently delivered the speed and reliability we needed without the overhead. Even as we've scaled rapidly and gone viral, they've kept up with our compute demands and delivered the stability we rely on. It has become a core part of our infrastructure.' Eylul Kayin, Partner at Gradient, echoes this sentiment: 'What the Cerebrium team has pulled off with such a small group is incredible. They're powering some of the most advanced AI voice and video applications at scale and we believe specialized infrastructure which scales elastically will be essential as real-time AI becomes core to customer experiences.' While Cerebrium is renowned for its serverless GPU infrastructure, it also offers capabilities for batching, multi-region deployments, large-scale data processing, and much more. This allows teams to run compute-intensive workloads with minimal setup, scale elastically, and only pay for what they use—all while maintaining strict security and data residency requirements.
IOL News
4 days ago
- Business
- IOL News
South African AI startup Cerebrium raises R150 million to scale its innovative platform
Cerebrium, a serverless AI infrastructure platform founded in Cape Town, has announced a successful $8.5 million (R151.35m) seed funding round, led by Gradient, Google's AI venture fund, with participation from Y Combinator, Authentic Ventures, and several strategic angel investors and operators. 'It's a remarkable milestone for South African tech, as local founders secure backing from one of the most influential AI investors in the world,' a statement from Cerebrium said Tuesday. The company and its AI platform have pioneered technical advancements that enable teams to build and scale multimodal AI applications without the traditional complexity or cost. Founded in Cape Town and now headquartered in New York City, this new funding will allow the team at Cerebrium to invest in new features and meet surging enterprise demand.
Yahoo
7 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Read the exclusive pitch deck AI infrastructure startup Cerebrium used to nab $8.5 million from Gradient Ventures
Cerebium has raised an $8.5 million seed round led by Gradient Ventures. The startup helps engineers build and scale multimodal AI apps, from voice AI to digital avatars. It's already driving millions in ARR with clients like Tavus and Deepgram, its cofounder told BI. AI infrastructure platform Cerebrium has raised an $8.5 million seed round led by Gradient Ventures, with participation from Y Combinator and Authentic Ventures. Cerebrium, cofounded in Cape Town by CEO Michael Louis and CTO Jonathan Irwin and headquartered in New York, is a platform used by its customers' engineering teams to build and scale multimodal AI applications — which can process different types of data, including text, images, and audio. Cerebrium works across three main categories, Louis said: Voice AI, real-time digital avatars, and healthcare. Cerebrium provides the infrastructure building blocks behind the scenes — such as model inference and training, and data processing — allowing engineers to focus on their core product and workflows, Louis told BI. It also helps customers to deploy their applications in different regions. "We believe specialized infrastructure, which scales elastically, will be essential as real-time AI becomes core to customer experiences," Gradient partner Eylul Kayin said in a statement. Louis formerly founded the e-commerce startup OneCart, which was acquired by Walmart-owned Massmart in 2021. The idea for Cerebrium came as the team struggled to build machine learning at the on-demand grocery delivery company, Louis said. Cerebrium offers serverless CPU and GPU infrastructure that spins up and down quickly, making it ideal for volatile workloads and cost-effective for clients, Louis said. "What that means is you only get charged for that exact time that it was basically running for," he said. The company currently counts only four engineers and is generating millions in annual recurring revenue. It counts among its clients AI-generated video purveyor Tavus and voice AI companies Deepgram and Vapi. The company will use funds to hire more engineers to meet enterprise demand and introduce new features, Louis the original article on Business Insider
Business Insider
7 days ago
- Business
- Business Insider
Read the exclusive pitch deck AI infrastructure startup Cerebrium used to nab $8.5 million from Gradient Ventures
AI infrastructure platform Cerebrium has raised an $8.5 million seed round led by Gradient Ventures, with participation from Y Combinator and Authentic Ventures. Cerebrium, cofounded in Cape Town by CEO Michael Louis and CTO Jonathan Irwin and headquartered in New York, is a platform used by its customers' engineering teams to build and scale multimodal AI applications — which can process different types of data, including text, images, and audio. Cerebrium works across three main categories, Louis said: Voice AI, real-time digital avatars, and healthcare. Cerebrium provides the infrastructure building blocks behind the scenes — such as model inference and training, and data processing — allowing engineers to focus on their core product and workflows, Louis told BI. It also helps customers to deploy their applications in different regions. "We believe specialized infrastructure, which scales elastically, will be essential as real-time AI becomes core to customer experiences," Gradient partner Eylul Kayin said in a statement. Louis formerly founded the e-commerce startup OneCart, which was acquired by Walmart-owned Massmart in 2021. The idea for Cerebrium came as the team struggled to build machine learning at the on-demand grocery delivery company, Louis said. Cerebrium offers serverless CPU and GPU infrastructure that spins up and down quickly, making it ideal for volatile workloads and cost-effective for clients, Louis said. "What that means is you only get charged for that exact time that it was basically running for," he said. The company currently counts only four engineers and is generating millions in annual recurring revenue. It counts among its clients AI-generated video purveyor Tavus and voice AI companies Deepgram and Vapi. The company will use funds to hire more engineers to meet enterprise demand and introduce new features, Louis said. Here's a look at the pitch deck Cerebrium used to raise $8.5 million in seed funding. Some slides and details have been redacted in order to share the deck publicly. Cerebrium Cerebrium Cerebrium Cerebrium Cerebrium Cerebrium Cerebrium Cerebrium Cerebrium Cerebrium Cerebrium Cerebrium Cerebrium Cerebrium Cerebrium
