Although an expanding number of businesses are investing in AI, many need help putting AI-powered initiatives into production and generating a meaningful return on investment
Numerous challenges exist. However, one that arises frequently is data management. The data businesses require to train, execute, and optimize AI models is disorganized, segregated, and otherwise suboptimal. 77% of organizations surveyed by Great Expectations, an open-source data benchmarking platform, in 2022 expressed concern regarding the integrity of their data.
Funding is pouring in on startups that bid to resolve these data issues.
Weka, a platform that facilitates the construction of data pipelines capable of managing diverse data sources, formats, and dimensions, disclosed on Wednesday that it had secured $140 million in a Series E round of two installments ($100 million and $40 million).
Valor Equity Partners led the round, including Nvidia, Norwest Venture Partners, Micron Ventures, Qualcomm Ventures, and Hitachi Ventures. Weka is valued at $1.6 billion post-money due to the oversubscribed round, double the company’s prior valuation.
When creating XIV, a data storage startup that IBM purchased in 2007 for $350 million, Maor Ben-Dayan, Omri Palmon, and Liran Zvibel met. After several years of service with IBM, the three individuals ultimately departed to pursue independent endeavors.
According to Zvibel, the data management issue persisted as a persistent grip.
“I was frustrated and disillusioned with seeing customers forced to use disparate, siloed data infrastructure solutions that were wasteful, costly and complex to deploy, manage and maintain,” he said. “The problem became especially apparent with the rise of cloud computing and the advent of high-performance computing, machine learning and the earliest AI workloads.”
Therefore, Zvibel hired Ben-Dayan and Palmon in 2013 to develop a new suite of data tools. This suite could lead to an improved method for storing, managing, and transferring data.
Zvibel stated, “We envisioned a platform with sufficient power to support the performance requirements of next-generation compute hardware as well as large-scale, data-intensive workloads in distributed, demanding environments.” “We anticipated that to meet the demands of contemporary workloads, it would have to be deployable and capable of processing tens of terabytes of data.”
Weka’s primary offering is parallel file systems, a distributed file system that can distribute and coordinate data tasks (e.g., copying files) across multiple locations (e.g., workstations and servers). Weka provides services and functionalities for high-performance computing workloads, visual effects, AI and machine learning, public clouds, hybrid clouds, and on-premises data centers.
A key advantage of Weka’s architecture, according to Zvibel, is that it can accelerate the training of AI models by decreasing the time required to transfer data between storage locations.
“Numerous steps are devoted to copying data sets in a typical generative AI data pipeline,” he explained, “which wastes critical training time.” “Weka continuously supplies model training hardware with data to accelerate the training process.”
Data platforms such as DataDirect, Pure Storage, NetApp, and Vast Data are Weka’s competitors. Vast is one of the more formidable of the group, having raised $118 million in Series E funding in December 2023, which increased the startup’s valuation by threefold to $9.1 billion.
However, Weka is maintaining its position, as evidenced by its serving more than 300 brands, eleven of the Fortune 50, and several undisclosed domestic and international government agencies, in addition to AI startup Stability AI.
Zvibel stated that the Silicon Valley-based company has a “line of sight” to cash flow positivity by December 2024 despite its significantly large workforce (approximately 400 employees globally, with plans to increase that number by 25% in the coming year).
“The latest raise was calculated based on favorable market conditions and proactive investor interest, which enabled us to raise at extremely favorable and advantageous terms for Weka,” he added. “Our average burn rate is expected to be less than half a million per month before reaching that milestone. We’ve exceeded $100 million in annual recurring revenue and are maintaining a hyper-growth trajectory.”
