Cake Secures $13 Million in Seed Funding to Simplify AI Adoption for Mid-Market Companies
Cake, a New York-based managed open-source AI infrastructure platform, has secured $13 million in seed funding. This significant investment was led by Gradient, Google’s early-stage AI fund, with participation from Primary Venture Partners, Alumni Ventures, Friends & Family Capital, Correlation Ventures, Firestreak Ventures, and several industry-veteran individual investors[1][4].
Founded in 2023, Cake aims to make cutting-edge AI technologies accessible to mid-market companies. The platform provides a comprehensive and flexible AI infrastructure designed to solve complex problems quickly. It offers a curated selection of pre-integrated and fully managed open-source AI components, allowing businesses of all sizes to deploy AI into production more efficiently and easily than ever before[1][4].
The funding will be used to further develop Cake’s platform, enabling it to bring advanced AI solutions to a broader range of businesses. Misha Herscu, CEO and co-founder of Cake, emphasized the importance of this investment, stating that companies across various sectors are investing in the latest AI technologies to gain a competitive edge. Cake’s platform transforms the latest innovations into widely available, production-ready infrastructure, lowering the barrier to entry around state-of-the-art AI for companies constrained by engineering bandwidth[4].
Cake’s founders, Misha Herscu and Skyler Thomas, are experienced professionals in the field of AI infrastructure. Herscu previously founded and successfully sold an AI company focused on radiology machine learning, while Thomas has held prominent engineering and chief architect roles at HP Enterprise and IBM. After conducting over 200 user interviews in 2022, they founded Cake to address the challenges faced by small and medium-sized enterprises in harnessing AI[5].
The recent funding round is a significant milestone for Cake, demonstrating the confidence of investors in its mission to simplify AI development for businesses. Gradient’s participation, as Google’s early-stage AI fund, underscores the potential of Cake’s platform to transform the AI landscape. With this investment, Cake is poised to make a significant impact in the AI industry, making advanced AI technologies more accessible and manageable for a wider range of businesses.
It is worth noting that there is another company named Cake, which is an insurtech startup that raised $1.3 million in pre-seed funding in February 2024. This company focuses on creating a transactional marketplace for independent insurance agents, aiming to transform insurance mergers and acquisitions. However, the recent $13 million seed funding round pertains to the AI infrastructure platform Cake, not the insurtech startup[2].
Overall, Cake’s managed open-source AI infrastructure platform is set to revolutionize the way businesses adopt and utilize AI technologies. With the backing of prominent investors and a strong founding team, Cake is well-positioned to make AI more accessible and manageable for companies across various sectors.