Foundry Finds $80 Million in Seed and Series A Funding

<p><strong>PALO ALTO<&sol;strong> &&num;8212&semi; Foundry&comma; a new breed of public cloud for AI&sol;ML workloads&comma; has raised &dollar;80 million in seed and Series A funding to orchestrate the world’s compute capacity&comma; rendering it universally accessible and useful&period; The round was co-led by Sequoia Capital and Lightspeed Venture Partners&comma; with participation from Redpoint&comma; Microsoft Ventures &lpar;M12&rpar;&comma; Conviction&comma; NEA&comma; and other leading technical and commercial minds from the industry&period; Foundry is building to ensure humanity maximizes the utility of the computing power we already have&comma; and will produce&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>Shaun Maguire&comma; partner at Sequoia Capital&comma; on why he led the seed and co-led the Series A rounds of Foundry&colon; &OpenCurlyDoubleQuote;Building AI infrastructure is uniquely relevant right now and highly complex to build&comma; requiring profound technical expertise in areas traditionally seen as separate&comma; like&semi; deep learning&comma; distributed systems&comma; the economics of energy&comma; finance&comma; as well as market theory and mechanism design&period; What Jared and the team at Foundry are building is at the forefront of innovation in the world of public clouds for AI&sol;ML workloads and will deeply influence the ecosystem for years to come&period;&&num;8221&semi;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>Founded by alumni from DeepMind’s core Deep Learning Team and Stanford’s CS PhD program &lpar;a group led by Databricks co-founder Matei Zaharia&rpar;&comma; Foundry tackles the core economic and technical challenges in AI and deep learning&period; Some of the difficulties faced by companies today&comma; such as the widely mentioned GPU shortage and the under-utilization of compute capacity&comma; prevent them from effectively utilizing their compute resources&period; Foundry’s innovative methods are solving these issues by providing scalable GPU instances with unmatched price-performance ratios&period; Early adopters range from large enterprises such as <a href&equals;"https&colon;&sol;&sol;cts&period;businesswire&period;com&sol;ct&sol;CT&quest;id&equals;smartlink&amp&semi;url&equals;https&percnt;3A&percnt;2F&percnt;2Fwww&period;kkr&period;com&percnt;2F&amp&semi;esheet&equals;53913578&amp&semi;newsitemid&equals;20240321438756&amp&semi;lan&equals;en-US&amp&semi;anchor&equals;KKR&amp&semi;index&equals;2&amp&semi;md5&equals;4e86d5ad96b8ab782bb3d9637608a3c8" target&equals;"&lowbar;blank" rel&equals;"nofollow noopener" shape&equals;"rect">KKR<&sol;a> and <a href&equals;"https&colon;&sol;&sol;cts&period;businesswire&period;com&sol;ct&sol;CT&quest;id&equals;smartlink&amp&semi;url&equals;https&percnt;3A&percnt;2F&percnt;2Fwww&period;lg&period;com&percnt;2Fus&amp&semi;esheet&equals;53913578&amp&semi;newsitemid&equals;20240321438756&amp&semi;lan&equals;en-US&amp&semi;anchor&equals;LG&amp&semi;index&equals;3&amp&semi;md5&equals;b84cd8ecbc261f9ddfed8572e2ce4d8c" target&equals;"&lowbar;blank" rel&equals;"nofollow noopener" shape&equals;"rect">LG<&sol;a> to prestigious academic institutions like Stanford and MIT&comma; to prominent AI startups through cluster partnerships with Lightspeed and Pear VC&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>Foundry’s founder and CEO&comma; Jared Quincy Davis&comma; stated that &OpenCurlyDoubleQuote;AI accelerator compute is arguably the most critical resource in civilization today&comma; so the bottlenecks here reverberate broadly&period; While the much-discussed GPU shortage is part of the challenge we face&comma; it&&num;8217&semi;s not the only issue&period; Arguably&comma; the industry suffers vastly more from under-utilization than from under-supply&period; The work we are doing at Foundry is addressing this from multiple angles&period;”<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>&OpenCurlyDoubleQuote;Arc has very high performance infrastructure needs for computational biology&comma; and Foundry delivers&comma;” said Alden Woodrow&comma; COO of Arc Institute&comma; a scientific research organization dedicated to the study of complex human disease&period; &OpenCurlyDoubleQuote;Foundry manages to combine perfect uptime and compelling economics with exceptionally fast execution&comma; which allows us to accelerate our development of state of the art foundation models&period;”<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>&OpenCurlyDoubleQuote;The AI revolution has set off a global search for far greater computing power&comma; and it&&num;8217&semi;s only the beginning&comma;” said Raviraj Jain&comma; Partner at Lightspeed&period; &OpenCurlyDoubleQuote;Foundry is filling a huge gap by helping any company achieve flexibility and scalability in computing pricing and power to bring their AI products to scale and usher in the AI era&period;”<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>This funding will allow Foundry to expand its operations&comma; improve its product offerings&comma; and establish more strategic partnerships&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;

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