LastMile AI raises $10M in seed round to operationalize AI models
A funding round led by Gradient, Google’s AI-focused venture fund, has raised $10 million for LastMile AI, a platform created to aid software engineers in developing and integrating generative AI models into their apps. Guillermo Rauch of Vercel, AME Cloud Ventures, 10x Founders, and Exceptional Capital also participated in the round. LastMile co-founder and CEO Sarmad Qadri intends to utilize the funds to expand the startup’s products, services, and seven-person team.
According to Qadri, AI, and machine learning have experienced several downturns, often due to restrictions on computing resources, expertise, or high-quality training data. LastMile intends to democratize generative AI by simplifying workflows, streamlining tools, and reducing the need for technical expertise.
Before founding LastMile, Qadri and co-founders Andrew Hoh and Suyog Sonwalkar were part of Meta’s product engineering team. While at Meta, they created various tools for machine learning engineers and data scientists, such as AI model management, benchmarking, experimentation, comparison, and monitoring tools.
LastMile was inspired by the current trend of AI, which is being driven by software developers and product teams using generative AI as a new part of their toolkit. However, machine learning developer tooling is mainly geared towards researchers and core machine learning practitioners. Qadri, the creator of LastMile, aims to empower builders by providing a new class of AI developer tools built for software engineers, not machine learning research scientists.
Adopting AI from scratch can be challenging for some companies, and they may need clarification on leveraging all the tech has to offer. According to a recent survey by S&P Global, around half of IT leaders say that their organizations need more time to implement AI. It may take five years or more to build AI into their company’s workflows fully. At the same time, business leaders remain optimistic about embracing AI. In a 2022 Gartner survey, 80% of executives said they think automation can be applied to any business decision. While model management was cited as a top roadblock, respondents indicated that other factors, including AI talent, were less significant an issue than might be assumed.
LastMile is a platform that enables customers to create AI apps using both open and closed-source text and image-generating models. Developers can personalize these models with their data and incorporate them into new or existing products and services.
LastMile has three modules to help users develop AI-powered apps. AI Workbooks allow experimentation with different models from a single pane of glass. AI Workflows combine other models to build more complex workflows, like an app that transcribes audio to text, translates the text, and then applies a synthetic voiceover. The AI Templates module creates reusable development setups that can be shared with team members or the wider LastMile community.
LastMile’s goal is to provide a single developer platform that encompasses the entire lifecycle of AI app development. The AI developer journey is fragmented and requires a nuanced understanding of every step, increasing the entry barrier. LastMile aims to build a platform that non-machine learning software engineers can use to develop AI-powered apps and workflows.
LlamaIndex and LangChain are competitors to LastMile. LlamaIndex offers a framework to assist developers in leveraging the capabilities of LLMs on top of their personal or organizational data. At the same time, LangChain is an open-source toolkit that simplifies the creation of apps that use large language models.
LastMile sees a massive opportunity to make waves in a nascent but fast-growing space. With the market for AI model operations set to grow to $16.61 billion by 2030, according to one report, LastMile believes enterprises are investigating how to incorporate AI in their applications and workflows. However, they are encountering last-mile issues that prevent them from getting things into production. LastMile provides the tooling and platform to assist businesses in confidently incorporating AI in their applications.