Enterprise tech start-up Petuum is on a quest to help businesses of any kind use artificial intelligence just like Google, Amazon, Facebook or Tesla.
According to Petuum co-founder, CEO and chief scientist Eric Xing (a computer science professor now on sabbatical from Carnegie Mellon University), AI can power all kinds of products that benefit society, like self-driving cars, product recommendations or rapid medical diagnostics.
Now the company has raised $93 million in a new round of venture funding from SoftBank to develop and popularize this technology, Xing told CNBC
Most organizations that want to use AI don’t have access to a deep bench of technical talent. Nor do they have the computing infrastructure to run AI workloads at scale. (AI involves gathering and analyzing massive amounts of data, which can stress general-purpose computers.)
Petuum has created an operating system and software that together allow organizations to use their existing data and computing infrastructure to “drag and drop” different AI and machine learning programs into their own systems.
Many venture-backed AI software companies are developing systems that serve one niche, like computer vision for self-driving cars, or ad-buying algorithms for agencies and brands.
Petuum is taking a “horizontal” approach, Xing said. Its technologies are meant to be applied to any industry. Google and Microsoft also offer cloud services that can be used for a wide variety of AI applications.
Petuum sometimes serves as a consultancy that develops and maintains new AI and machine learning solutions for other businesses. But it also plans to sell or license software that can be used on a “self-serve” basis.
Source: Tech CNBC
A.I. start-up Petuum is the latest company to get a big check from SoftBank