Serbian cloud-based AI chip factory Anari AI raises $2 million in seed funding

Novi Sad, Serbia-based Anari AI has raised $2 million in seed funding led by Earlybird, with participation from Acequia Capital, Serbian Entrepreneurs, and angel investor and "The Lean Startup" author Eric Ries.

Anari is a cloud-based AI chip factory that makes custom-designed AI chips available to all with just one click. Through this approach, Anari allows for companies to build and deploy AI solutions in weeks instead of the industry de facto, 12-18 months. All at a fraction of the cost of traditional hardware development.

“Dedicated designs or flexible architectures are expensive, time-consuming and require hardware skills (in short: take lots of effort). Anari is a game-changer in two ways: it removes the trade-off between performance and effort, and it makes AI-problem-specific chip solutions available instantaneously in the cloud. I am excited about this huge potential,” comments Earlbird co-founder and Partner Roland Manger.

Built upon a custom Python-based programming framework, Anari makes it possible for software engineers to become hardware designers.

The first customisable AI chip from Anari is Thor X, delivering 100x more efficient processing of 3D Point Cloud/Graph data structures when compared to a high-end GPU.

“You no longer have to tune your model to the computing infrastructure that’s available and designed for broad and generic use cases,” said Sasha Ostojic, former NVIDIA software VP and now Operating Partner at Playground Global. “ Anari's cloud chip technology is the future of cloud computing.”

As part of the raise Roland Manger and Sasha Ostojic will join Anari’s board of directors and join advisors Christoph Auer-Welsbach and Dejan Markovic.

"In a world where everything is expected to be customizable and in the cloud, it has only been a matter of time until someone breaks into the semiconductor industry with a disruptive approach. With its virtual chip factory, Anari.AI enables the world to create fully customisable AI chips 100x faster and at a fraction of the costs. Now also with the predictable global chip shortage, it is a no-brainer that the stellar team around Anari will be a major player in defining the next computing paradigm," adds Auer-Welsbach.