Shoreditch tech firm set to "democratise AI" on a global scale with £7.1m investment

A London machine learning tech company has secured multi-million pound investment to grow its international footprint and bolster its research and development capabilities.

Shoreditch-based Seldon has raised £7.1m in a Series A funding round in order to develop new offices in both the UK, the US and Asia.

Founded in 2014, Seldon specialises in cloud agnostic machine learning deployment, and works in partnership with brands such as Google, Red Hat, IBM and Amazon Web Services. The firm’s suite of products aims to enhance machine learning deployment pipelines with explainability, governance and monitoring functions.

Co-led by AlbionVC and Cambridge Innovation Capital, the round also saw participation from existing investors Amadeus Capital Partners and Global Brain, with follow-on investment from other existing shareholders.

The new funding will be used to accelerate R&D and drive commercial expansion, as well as more than doubling the size of the team over the next 18 months. In addition, Seldon plans to build out its global footprint with a new go-to-market team in the US, a solutions-based engineering team in Asia, and a new R&D lab in Cambridge.

Alex Housley, CEO and founder of Seldon, commented: “There’s never been a greater need to effectively deploy ML models in enterprise, and this fresh capital injection will ensure our customers have the tools they need to achieve their goals.

“As we enter a new decade the importance of explainable AI and robust monitoring tools cannot be overstated, and we’re excited to welcome Albion and Cambridge Innovation Capital as new partners as we scale our international operations.”

Nadine Torbey, investor at AlbionVC, said: “Seldon is at the forefront of the next wave of tech innovation, and the leadership team are true visionaries. Seldon has been able to build an impressive open source community and add immediate productivity value to some of the world’s leading companies.

“Seldon’s thorough understanding of market dynamics and customers’ commercial needs places them in a unique position to support users as they deploy machine learning models at scale. We are delighted to co-lead their Series A round and join them on their amazing journey as they embark on the next stage of growth.”

Vin Lingathoti, partner at Cambridge Innovation Capital, added: “Seldon’s open-source platform operationalises ML model development and accelerates the time-to-market by eliminating the pain points involved in developing, deploying and monitoring Machine Learning models at scale.

“CIC is excited to partner with Seldon as the team builds the next-gen ML Ops platform to democratise AI across enterprises.”