This Washington-based Startup, ‘Spice AI’, is Developing a Platform to Make Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning More Accessible to Developers

Even for experienced developers, creating intelligent apps that give the best possible experience by employing AI is still much too complicated. Combining programming with solid data science is required to elevate the app, resulting in an intelligent app. It is currently far too challenging to incorporate AI in these apps.

Spice AI seeks to make it easier for developers to incorporate artificial intelligence into their apps. Developers may use the open-source software to construct intelligent apps that learn from real-time data and adapt using machine learning. Developers may increase AI capabilities utilizing the platform’s quick local development cycles and advanced CI/CD workflows. The goal is to make AI capabilities easy to implement and prevent lengthy development cycles.

Spice AI is focusing on reward features as it develops its system. Developers can tell the algorithm what it should optimize. For example, a project the company is piloting with an Australian store aims to find the optimum pickup location for a customer’s order, which may or may not be the closest location, based on criteria including driving times and item availability. It also allows developers to publish the manifest with their reward functions so that others can re-use them for their applications using a package manager called Spicerack.

Spice AI was founded in June 2021 by Microsoft and GitHub alumni Luke Kim and Phillip LeBlanc. Luke was the co-founder of Azure Incubations in the Office of the Azure CTO before co-founding Spice AI, where he managed cross-functional engineering teams to invent and develop products, including Dapr and OAM. Phillip has contributed to services that developers use every day, including GitHub Actions, Azure Active Directory, and Visual Studio App Center, as an engineering manager and IC working on distributed systems at GitHub and Microsoft.

The Seattle-based startup has raised $1 million in pre-seed funding. Madrona Venture Group led the round. Nat Friedman, the CEO of GitHub, and Mark Russinovich, the CTO of Microsoft Azure, both invested. Picus Capital, TA Ventures, Founders’ Co-op, Cardinia Ventures, and Elysium Venture Capital are other institutional investors who participated. Spice AI will use these funds to expand the company’s core staff in the Pacific Northwest and hire full-time software and machine learning engineers.

References:

• https://spice.ai/
• https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/spice-ai
• https://www.geekwire.com/2021/execs-github-microsoft-azure-invest-new-ai-startup-helps-devs-build-intelligent-apps/
• https://techcrunch.com/2021/10/14/spice-ai-wants-to-help-developers-build-smarter-appli
• https://www.finsmes.com/2021/10/spice-ai-raises-1m-in-pre-seed-funding.html