The creator of PyTorch Lightning, Lightning AI, unveils its new open-source platform backed by $40M series B funding. The company is introducing the platform to offer a frictionless way to enhance its AI-powered products and services.
Lightning AI, previously known as Grid.ai, is serving as an “operating system” in the new era of accessibility in AI technology. The framework introduces a novel method to build AI-powered products in a unified manner that accelerates the deployment of AI across enterprise and academic use cases.
William Falcon, Co-founder and CEO of Lightning AI, “From day one, I wanted to reimagine the experience of building artificial intelligence beyond the current surfeit of tools and systems. Until now, there hasn’t been a way to build production-grade AI apps that takes into account the entire pipeline from development to production.”
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Lightning AI is the result of strategic work in 2018 in the New York University CILVR Lab and Facebook AI Research. Falcon worked as a Ph.D. student alongside advisers Yann LeCun and Kyunghyun Cho to create the renowned PyTorch Lightning framework. The success and growth of the project led him to build a specific platform that focuses on widespread AI adoption.
The $40M series B funding brings the company to $58.6M. The investment will fuel further innovation in AI technology and research. The innovation and research will aim to lower the barriers to AI adoption, given the global AI market is skyrocketing.
Dr. Kristof Schum, Global Segment Leader of ML at Amazon Web Services, said, “We are excited about the development Lightning AI is leading by allowing AI-driven applications relevant to specific verticals come to life in a simple way. The partnership will bring further ease-of-use to customers and fit well with AWS’s industry, use-case and business problem driven approach.”
