BOSTON, July 28, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- In an AI-driven world, features rule; they determine AI models' quality, velocity, and overall value. However, preparing, deploying, managing, and monitoring data that feeds AI models remains manual and time-consuming. Enter FeatureByte, an AI startup formed by a team of data science pioneers who today announced a $5.7M seed round led by Glasswing Ventures and Tola Capital. FeatureByte is a SaaS solution built specifically for data scientists to simplify the creation, serving, managing, and monitoring of machine learning features. The funding will be used to scale R&D and go-to-market operations.
Feature Engineering and Feature Management: The Weakest Link in Scaling AI
Features drive AI, helping shape the smart systems that improve how we manage our businesses, care for patients, harvest crops, light up our cities, enhance cybersecurity, and much more. The engineering and management of features is a critical yet complex, expensive, and slow process and remains the weakest link in scaling AI.
According to Gartner, due to the time, effort, and skill put into selecting and engineering features for ML (Machine Learning), they are some of the most highly curated and refined data assets in the business. Despite this, most organizations lack an effective feature management system.
“Glasswing Ventures is excited to lead FeatureByte’s first round of financing and to back such an exceptional founding team with unparalleled domain expertise and a proven record of delivering transformative data science products,” said Rudina Seseri, Founder and Managing Partner, Glasswing Ventures. “FeatureByte’s platform is solving a critical pain for data science and engineering teams and unlocking machine learning’s potential in the enterprise. We believe FeatureByte will become an enduring company in the AI landscape.”
FeatureByte was founded by the team that built the data science and engineering backbone for AI unicorn, DataRobot. FeatureByte’s Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Razi Raziuddin, helped scale DataRobot from 10 to 850 employees and pioneered the services-led go-to-market strategy that became the hallmark of DataRobot’s rapid growth. Xavier Conort, Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer of FeatureByte, was #1 ranked Kaggle Grandmaster and Chief Data Scientist at DataRobot, where he built a world-class R&D data science team responsible for the ideation and execution of the Data Science roadmap.
“Our team has successfully launched AI deployments for hundreds of organizations worldwide. However, the one constant challenge enterprises face is feature engineering and management. Xavier and I formed FeatureByte to radically simplify the process for data scientists and application developers,” said Razi Raziuddin, Co-Founder and CEO of FeatureByte. “The market is extremely fragmented, with siloed solutions addressing only pieces of the puzzle. We are developing a solution from first principles to address full cycle featuring engineering and are excited to partner with Glasswing Ventures and Tola Capital to drive this vision and mission forward.”
“We are excited to invest in the FeatureByte team as they look to democratize feature engineering and management,” said Akshay Bhushani, Partner, Tola Capital. “The company will help data scientists and developers execute world-class machine learning features at scale - simply and efficiently. For organizations, the result is accelerated innovation and AI development.”
About FeatureByte
FeatureByte’s data-centric AI solution radically simplifies feature engineering and feature management for data scientists, enabling organizations to achieve AI scale. FeatureByte solves the problems of various silos of work that can occur in domain knowledge, data science, and data engineering. For more information or to sign up for an invite-only beta program, contact info@featurebyte.com or visit https://featurebyte.com/.
About Glasswing Ventures
Glasswing Ventures is an early-stage venture capital firm dedicated to investing in the next generation of AI and frontier technology startups that enable the rise of the intelligent enterprise. The firm was founded by visionary partners with decades of experience in these markets, a disciplined investment approach, and a strong track record of industry-leading returns. Glasswing leverages its deep domain expertise and world-leading advisory councils to invest in exceptional founders who transform markets and revolutionize industries. Learn more at https://glasswing.vc/.
About Tola Capital
Founded in 2010 by ex-software operators, Tola Capital is a venture capital firm that believes in the power of software and data to transform businesses. We provide hands-on engagement to founders who see that future and are building solutions with the potential for long-term, transformational change. Tola Capital exclusively targets software companies with essential products for enterprise customers, led by exceptional and diverse talent. Tola Capital invests globally and across multiple stages to change how the world will work. For more information, visit https://www.tolacapital.com.
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