Tecton raises US$100mn to accelerate AI development
Tecton, a cloud platform startup that helps companies speed up their AI development projects, has raised US$100mn in Series C funding, bringing the total raised to US$160mn.
The company plans to use the money to further deliver on customer value and to scale both engineering and go-to-market teams. This round was led by new investor Kleiner Perkins with participation from strategic investors Databricks and Snowflake Ventures, previous investors Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia Capital and new investors Bain Capital Ventures and Tiger Global.
“We expect the software we use today to be highly personalised and intelligent. While ML makes this possible, it remains far from reality as the enabling infrastructure is prohibitively difficult to build for all but the most advanced companies. Tecton makes this infrastructure accessible to any team, enabling them to build ML apps faster. As this continues to accelerate their growth trajectory, we are proud to partner with Mike, Kevin and team to pioneer and lead this exciting new space,” said Bucky Moore, partner, Kleiner Perkins.
Using AI and ML to help simplify data
Tecton's platform enables software teams to store the code they use to extract features for their AI applications in a centralised cloud-based hub. Centralising everything in one place eases developers’ work, according to the startup. Tecton provides features that help developers organise their feature code, test it for flaws and easily deploy it to production.
Earlier this year, Tecton partnered with both Databricks and Snowflake to accelerate delivery of ML applications and both became strategic investors. Last month, Tecton was named Databricks’ ML/AI Partner of the Year and Snowflake’s Emerging Technology Partner of the Year.
“The investment in Tecton is a natural fit for Databricks Ventures as we look to extend the lakehouse ecosystem with best-in-class solutions and support companies that align with our mission to simplify and democratise data and AI,” said Andrew Ferguson, Head of Databricks Ventures. “We're excited to deepen our partnership with the Tecton team and look forward to delivering continued innovation for our joint customers.”
Stefan Williams, VP Corporate Development and Snowflake Ventures at Snowflake added: “Together, Tecton and Snowflake enable data teams to securely and reliably store, process and manage the complete lifecycle of ML features for production in Snowflake, making it easier for users across data science, engineering and analyst teams to collaborate and work from a single source of data truth. This investment expands our partnership and is the latest example of Snowflake’s commitment to helping our customers effortlessly get the most value from their data.”