Dublin-based Inspeq AI, an innovative full-stack AI Ops platform, has raised $1.1M in funding to further its mission of delivering safe, secure, and responsible AI solutions. Sure Valley Ventures led the investment round, with participation from Delta Partners, Founders [a talent accelerator funded by NDRC], Plug and Play, and several prominent angel investors, including former executives from Meta Ireland, Salesforce, Gong, and BT UK.
Optimising AI development and deployment
Inspeq AI, founded by Apoorva Kumar and Ramanujam Macharla Vijayakumar, is dedicated to revolutionizing the deployment of Gen-AI applications with a comprehensive platform designed for effective and efficient production. This platform tackles AI performance issues throughout the LLM development lifecycle, ensuring optimal safety and ethical compliance. By reducing security and hallucination issues by up to 80%, Inspeq AI enhances reliability and trustworthiness. The company’s research team has created over fifty metrics and guardrails, significantly enhancing AI application capabilities across various domains, developing solutions at lower costs and faster speeds. Inspeq AI is poised to lead AI compliance for DevOps practices as global AI regulations evolve.
Leveraging their extensive experience at Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, and LinkedIn, the founders have built Inspeq AI to assist developers in optimizing all phases of Gen-AI production and development. From testing and evaluation to monitoring, performance enhancement, and guard-railing of B2B and enterprise AI applications, the platform addresses performance issues throughout the entire LLM development lifecycle.
Inspeq AI’s advanced AI/ML models have resulted in AI solutions developed at 70% lower cost and four times faster speed. Their work has also achieved a 90% improvement in the performance of Large Language Models (LLMs), significantly advancing AI capabilities and ensuring the reliability and trustworthiness of AI solutions.
Expanding team and operations
With the new funding, Inspeq AI plans to expand its team in applied AI, data science, and full-stack development, and extend its operations in Ireland, London, and India. CEO and Co-Founder Apoorva Kumar commented: “Recent cases of production-grade Gen AI applications going wrong have highlighted the challenges businesses face in scaling Gen AI. By using Inspeq AI as an ops layer, businesses can overcome these bottlenecks, ensuring trust, safety, and ethical standards. We are thrilled to be working with significant enterprise companies globally, like HCL, helping them develop production-grade Gen AI applications that deliver immense benefits to their customers.”
CTO and Co-Founder Ramanujam Macharla Vijayakumar added: “We are collaborating closely with the likes of Pocket FM – a platform transforming audio entertainment with audio series, and are helping reduce their manual verification tasks, achieving accurate content delivery at scale. As AI regulations grow globally, Inspeq is well-positioned to lead AI compliance for DevOps practices.”
Strong backing from industry leaders
The investment round attracted several notable investors, including Ex-MD of Meta Ireland Rick Kelly, Ex-VP of Salesforce Cyril Treacy, Head of EMEA at Gong Shantanu Shekhar, Senior Director of Data & AI at BT UK Debjani Roy, and Cork tech angels Bill and Leonard Lynch. Unicorn founders Gaurav Singh Kushwaha and Prateek Dixit also participated.
Barry Downes, Managing Partner of Sure Valley Ventures, expressed confidence in the founders: “After our first meeting with Apoorva and Ramanujam, we knew right away that they were the sort of founders we wanted to back. 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. We look forward to working alongside our co-investors to support Inspeq on their exciting growth journey for many years ahead.”
Amy Neale, General Partner at Delta Partners, added: “Delta is excited to support the Inspeq team on their mission to enable developers to release their products and applications with confidence. Apoorva, Ramanujam, and the Inspeq team are drawing on their extensive experience to build a novel approach to LLM Ops that their customers can rely on, and we’re excited to go on the journey with them.”
