Irish artificial intelligence company Inspeq AI has raised $1.1 million in funding as it focuses on its goal of helping global companies develop safe, secure and responsible generative AI applications.
A graduate of the NDRC-funded talent accelerator Founders, Inspeq has developed a platform to optimise the production and development phases of generative AI, putting guardrails in place to help reduce security and hallucination issues by up to 80 per cent and ensuring safety and ethical compliance. It also allows users to develop more accurate AI solutions at a lower cost and in less time, targeting an enterprise-grade solution.
Inspeq’s founders Apoorva Kumar and Ramanujam Macharla Vijayakumar have significant experience in the AI sector, working with companies such as Microsoft, Meta, Amazon and LinkedIn before striking out on their own.
“We’ve been seeing all these different cases of AI going wrong,” said Mr Kumar. “This has created a big question mark on the overall use of generative AI as well as large language models. It’s a big technological advancement that we have made, as human beings. With this whole gen AI wave, it’s an inflection point. I think it’s very important to make sure that there are good guardrailing solutions to make sure that the outputs of the applications are accurate, consistent, they are not hallucinating, they’re free from any kind of biases or any kind of negative tone.”
The round, which was led by Sure Valley Ventures (SVV), is the first investment by SVV’s AI-focused Irish Investment Fund. It also saw participation from Delta Partners, Founders @Dogpatch Labs, venture capital investor Plug and Play and a number of angel investors.
Mr Kumar said Inspeq had been looking out for dedicated AI or data infrastructure funds, which would bring an understanding of the business.
The money will be used to bolster Inspeq’s research and development team, with plans to hire for a number of roles across applied AI, data science and full-stack development, growing operations in Ireland, London and India.
“After our first meeting with Apoorva and Ramanujam we knew right away that they were the sort of founders we wanted to back,” said SVV managing partner Barry Downes. 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.”
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