Irish start-up Zerve, specializing in data science and artificial intelligence, has secured $3.8 million in pre-seed funding to expand its research and development capabilities and staff. The company’s platform facilitates collaboration among data science and AI development teams by promoting exploratory data analysis and the development of production-quality code.
Zerve’s co-founder, Phily Hayes, described the company’s architectural vision as one that promotes multiplayer data science, similar to what Figma did for design by allowing designers to collaborate in real-time. The funding from the pre-seed round provides Zerve with the opportunity to realize this vision and capitalize on its potential.
The funding was led by Elkstone Ventures, with contributions from angel investors including Algolia CTO Sean Mullaney and former DataRobot EVP of engineering Rob Hickey. Niall McEvoy, partner at Elkstone Ventures, praised Zerve’s ambition to bridge the gap between data science and AI development, emphasizing the potential for its technology to break down silos and harness the power of AI and data science.
Zerve has also been selected as one of the 10 European startups for the Intel Ignite Accelerator program, which is tailored for deep-tech companies. The fragmented nature of tools available to data scientists for sharing code and results with colleagues was identified as a productivity hindrance by Mr. Hayes. He hinted at the need for a unified platform like Zerve’s to address this issue.