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    AI

    Wafer AI Raises $40M Series A

    The inference startup secured funding from MarathonMP and Chemistry among others.

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    17 Sources, 29d ago, first seen 29d ago

    TLDR

    Wafer posted that it raised a $40M Series A co-led by MarathonMP and Chemistry. The round included participation from Wing VC, AMD Ventures, Outset Capital, Fifty Years, Y Combinator and existing backers plus angels such as Jeff Dean. Wafer routes open models across NVIDIA, AMD and TPU hardware to deliver low-cost inference. Y Combinator stated the company reached $8 million in annual recurring revenue four months after launch. Separate reporting in the packet noted acquisition interest at a valuation above $200 million.

    Combined views

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    17 Sources, first seen 29d ago

    Combined views

    390.7K

    17 Sources, first seen 29d ago

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    Sentiment

    Positive94.7%5.3%Negative

    Summary

    Sentiment

    Positive94.7%5.3%Negative

    Many accounts congratulated Wafer on its $40M Series A for fast AI inference and praised the founders' rapid success plus decision to turn down acquisitions, while a few called the growth a speedrun or questioned output quality.

    Based on 92 sentiment-bearing replies from 75 accounts across 6 conversations.

    Summary

    Many accounts congratulated Wafer on its $40M Series A for fast AI inference and praised the founders' rapid success plus decision to turn down acquisitions, while a few called the growth a speedrun or questioned output quality.

    Based on 92 sentiment-bearing replies from 75 accounts across 6 conversations.

    17 Sources

    @wafer_aiWe’re excited to announce that we’ve raised a $40M Series A! co-led by @MarathonMP and @chemistry, with participation from @Wing_VC, @AMD Ventures, @outsetcap, @fiftyyears, and @ycombinator, and our existing investors doubling down on @wafer_ai. we are also joined by an incredible list of angels, including @JeffDean (CEO, @DiscoLoopAI), @rauchg (CEO, @vercel), @andyfang (CTO, @DoorDash), @kvogt (CEO, Bot), @akothari (COO, @NotionHQ), @eastdakota (CEO, @Cloudflare), @deepgramscott (CEO, @DeepgramAI), and more! Most inference optimization today is manual, service-heavy, and done one-time before deployment. Wafer’s vision is AI that optimizes AI. Wafer continuously learns from your workload’s traffic patterns and performance constraints, then finds the optimal deployment across model, engine, kernels, and hardware. This capital helps us accelerate automating more of the inference optimization loop, giving every deployment the leverage of an expert inference-performance team that continuously finds ways to improve performance per dollar. Thank you to the customers who trusted us with their workloads, the partners who built alongside us, the investors who believed in our mission, and the Wafer team members who have worked tirelessly to turn this vision into reality. 🫶🧇
    @ycombinatorRT @wafer_ai: We’re excited to announce that we’ve raised a $40M Series A! co-led by @MarathonMP and @chemistry, with participation from @…
    @gpugenei get to spend all of this if you have compute please reach out Co-led by @MarathonMP and @chemistry, with participation from @Wing_VC, @AMD Ventures, @outsetcap, @fiftyyears, and @ycombinator, and our existing investors doubling down on @wafer_ai. we are also joined by an incredible list of angels, including @JeffDean (CEO, @DiscoLoopAI), @rauchg (CEO, @vercel), @andyfang (CTO, @DoorDash), @kvogt (CEO, Bot), @akothari (COO, @NotionHQ), @eastdakota (CEO, @Cloudflare), @deepgramscott (CEO, @DeepgramAI), and more!
    @harjtaggarRT @steph_palazzolo: Wafer, a year-old inference provider that uses Nvidia and non-Nvidia chips, turned down acquisition offers to raise $4…
    @gokulrLeading Wafer's Series A tl;dr @MarathonMP is co-leading Wafer’s $40M Series A with our friends at @Chemistry, with participation from @AMD Ventures, @Wing_VC, @outsetcap, @fiftyyears, @ycombinator, and several amazing angels @JeffDean (CEO, @DiscoLoopAI), @rauchg (CEO @vercel), @andyfang (CTO, @DoorDash), @akothari (COO, @NotionHQ), @kvogt (CEO, Bot), @eastdakota (CEO, @Cloudflare) and deepgramscott (CEO, @DeepgramAI), among others. Everything will be inference. Inference is and will be the single largest market within AI. It's the white hot center within the white hot center of AI. Today, to make inference work well, highly specialized engineers manually tune models, serving engines, kernels, and hardware. The work is slow, expensive, and often repeated when traffic changes, models improve, or new chips arrive. Wafer has built a fundamentally difference inference architecture from the ground up. Wafer's agents continuously study production traffic, identify bottlenecks, test changes, verify the results, and deploy the best-performing configurations. Simply put, Wafer builds AI that improves AI. And boy, does it improve AI. Customer after customer we spoke with, raved about Wafer's performance compared to incumbent inference providers. A very large platform said that they plan to move 100% of their inference volume to Wafer as soon as possible. Wafer cofounders @gpuemi and @gpusteve have a deep understanding of this problem through working on GPU and kernel optimization for an extended period of time. One of the most impressive things about Wafer - besides their product - is the exceptional team that Emilio and Steven have built. They have built a distinct, compelling, talent-dense culture and created an incredibly high bar for hiring that i've observed in every generational company I've been part of. Wafer has already doubled in size in the weeks since we invested, and continues growing at a rate that puts them in rarefied territory. More importantly, their product is unique, differentiated and we continue to get unsolicited raves from their customers. We’re incredibly excited to support the @wafer_ai team as they pursue their mission to maximize intelligence per watt and build a generational company that will matter for decades. PS: h/t my partner @ChaseAPackard for the meme below.
    @ethankurzI first met @gpuemi right after YC demo day – in the amazonian expanse of Plant Cafe Dogpatch. Over a pesto tofu scramble, I could see that Emi was clearly smart, talented, passionate, and driven – but it was clear his product - an inference optimization platform for the big inference companies - just wasn’t working. I could see the tension between belief and realism even as he pitched me on his original premise, and the breakout push that was just around the corner. My honest reaction was: I hope he works on something else. Turns out a breakout was around the corner. Emi was working on something else, deftly pivoting in April of this year to a new, more expansive and adjacent vision - making inference more accessible to the masses. In so doing, he leaned into the company’s competitive advantage - moving into an exciting and demand-laden, but yes highly competitive, market that many would have found way too daunting to tackle. Emi would need that passion and drive – which was blatantly obvious in that first meeting – in order to battle it out with much bigger incumbents in the wild west of a newly emerging market. One name change later, @wafer_ai was reborn as a real-time inference cloud – taking advantage of their agents that continuously tune their inference engine, custom kernels, and hardware to each company’s exact traffic, model and SLA – in the end delivering the best performance per dollar in the market (at 30 to 50% more tokens per dollar) and climbing to #1 on the Artificial Analysis leaderboard (https://artificialanalysis.ai/providers/wafer). In the process, they became the first provider to make AMD GPUs competitive with NVIDIA’s – at a materially lower cost and shorter lead time. When Wafer posted their performance numbers, customers took notice; an engineer recently texted asking for eight figures worth of throughput “by the end of the week,” not a random ‘lead’ in Wafer’s funnel - but a soon-to-be live customer. Wafer already powers Vercel, Venice, Flip, Neon Health, Brilliant, and dozens of other fast-growing AI companies, servicing 2T+ tokens a month. And it’s not unusual for me to get a random text from a CEO or CTO sharing just how Wafer’s performance gains are speeding up the underlying performance of their products. So Emi and I kept meeting up and I'm thrilled that @chemistry is co-leading their $40M Series A alongside @MarathonMP, @ycombinator and many angels. Congrats @gpuemi, @gpusteve, and team. @kshenster, @Mark_Goldberg_, @loubohan and I are excited to be on team Wafer for the road ahead.
    @snowmakerWhen I met @gpusteve and @gpuemi 18 months ago, they were undergrads at UChicago who weren't planning to start a company. Today they're announcing their $40M Series A. This is how they got there.
    @garrytanRT @gokulr: Great interview with @gpuemi and @gpusteve, which showcases why we at @MarathonMP (+ @Chemistry + @snowmaker / @ycombinator +…
    @gpustevethis is AI

    17 Sources

    @wafer_aiWe’re excited to announce that we’ve raised a $40M Series A! co-led by @MarathonMP and @chemistry, with participation from @Wing_VC, @AMD Ventures, @outsetcap, @fiftyyears, and @ycombinator, and our existing investors doubling down on @wafer_ai. we are also joined by an incredible list of angels, including @JeffDean (CEO, @DiscoLoopAI), @rauchg (CEO, @vercel), @andyfang (CTO, @DoorDash), @kvogt (CEO, Bot), @akothari (COO, @NotionHQ), @eastdakota (CEO, @Cloudflare), @deepgramscott (CEO, @DeepgramAI), and more! Most inference optimization today is manual, service-heavy, and done one-time before deployment. Wafer’s vision is AI that optimizes AI. Wafer continuously learns from your workload’s traffic patterns and performance constraints, then finds the optimal deployment across model, engine, kernels, and hardware. This capital helps us accelerate automating more of the inference optimization loop, giving every deployment the leverage of an expert inference-performance team that continuously finds ways to improve performance per dollar. Thank you to the customers who trusted us with their workloads, the partners who built alongside us, the investors who believed in our mission, and the Wafer team members who have worked tirelessly to turn this vision into reality. 🫶🧇
    @ycombinatorRT @wafer_ai: We’re excited to announce that we’ve raised a $40M Series A! co-led by @MarathonMP and @chemistry, with participation from @…
    @gpugenei get to spend all of this if you have compute please reach out Co-led by @MarathonMP and @chemistry, with participation from @Wing_VC, @AMD Ventures, @outsetcap, @fiftyyears, and @ycombinator, and our existing investors doubling down on @wafer_ai. we are also joined by an incredible list of angels, including @JeffDean (CEO, @DiscoLoopAI), @rauchg (CEO, @vercel), @andyfang (CTO, @DoorDash), @kvogt (CEO, Bot), @akothari (COO, @NotionHQ), @eastdakota (CEO, @Cloudflare), @deepgramscott (CEO, @DeepgramAI), and more!
    @harjtaggarRT @steph_palazzolo: Wafer, a year-old inference provider that uses Nvidia and non-Nvidia chips, turned down acquisition offers to raise $4…
    @gokulrLeading Wafer's Series A tl;dr @MarathonMP is co-leading Wafer’s $40M Series A with our friends at @Chemistry, with participation from @AMD Ventures, @Wing_VC, @outsetcap, @fiftyyears, @ycombinator, and several amazing angels @JeffDean (CEO, @DiscoLoopAI), @rauchg (CEO @vercel), @andyfang (CTO, @DoorDash), @akothari (COO, @NotionHQ), @kvogt (CEO, Bot), @eastdakota (CEO, @Cloudflare) and deepgramscott (CEO, @DeepgramAI), among others. Everything will be inference. Inference is and will be the single largest market within AI. It's the white hot center within the white hot center of AI. Today, to make inference work well, highly specialized engineers manually tune models, serving engines, kernels, and hardware. The work is slow, expensive, and often repeated when traffic changes, models improve, or new chips arrive. Wafer has built a fundamentally difference inference architecture from the ground up. Wafer's agents continuously study production traffic, identify bottlenecks, test changes, verify the results, and deploy the best-performing configurations. Simply put, Wafer builds AI that improves AI. And boy, does it improve AI. Customer after customer we spoke with, raved about Wafer's performance compared to incumbent inference providers. A very large platform said that they plan to move 100% of their inference volume to Wafer as soon as possible. Wafer cofounders @gpuemi and @gpusteve have a deep understanding of this problem through working on GPU and kernel optimization for an extended period of time. One of the most impressive things about Wafer - besides their product - is the exceptional team that Emilio and Steven have built. They have built a distinct, compelling, talent-dense culture and created an incredibly high bar for hiring that i've observed in every generational company I've been part of. Wafer has already doubled in size in the weeks since we invested, and continues growing at a rate that puts them in rarefied territory. More importantly, their product is unique, differentiated and we continue to get unsolicited raves from their customers. We’re incredibly excited to support the @wafer_ai team as they pursue their mission to maximize intelligence per watt and build a generational company that will matter for decades. PS: h/t my partner @ChaseAPackard for the meme below.
    @ethankurzI first met @gpuemi right after YC demo day – in the amazonian expanse of Plant Cafe Dogpatch. Over a pesto tofu scramble, I could see that Emi was clearly smart, talented, passionate, and driven – but it was clear his product - an inference optimization platform for the big inference companies - just wasn’t working. I could see the tension between belief and realism even as he pitched me on his original premise, and the breakout push that was just around the corner. My honest reaction was: I hope he works on something else. Turns out a breakout was around the corner. Emi was working on something else, deftly pivoting in April of this year to a new, more expansive and adjacent vision - making inference more accessible to the masses. In so doing, he leaned into the company’s competitive advantage - moving into an exciting and demand-laden, but yes highly competitive, market that many would have found way too daunting to tackle. Emi would need that passion and drive – which was blatantly obvious in that first meeting – in order to battle it out with much bigger incumbents in the wild west of a newly emerging market. One name change later, @wafer_ai was reborn as a real-time inference cloud – taking advantage of their agents that continuously tune their inference engine, custom kernels, and hardware to each company’s exact traffic, model and SLA – in the end delivering the best performance per dollar in the market (at 30 to 50% more tokens per dollar) and climbing to #1 on the Artificial Analysis leaderboard (https://artificialanalysis.ai/providers/wafer). In the process, they became the first provider to make AMD GPUs competitive with NVIDIA’s – at a materially lower cost and shorter lead time. When Wafer posted their performance numbers, customers took notice; an engineer recently texted asking for eight figures worth of throughput “by the end of the week,” not a random ‘lead’ in Wafer’s funnel - but a soon-to-be live customer. Wafer already powers Vercel, Venice, Flip, Neon Health, Brilliant, and dozens of other fast-growing AI companies, servicing 2T+ tokens a month. And it’s not unusual for me to get a random text from a CEO or CTO sharing just how Wafer’s performance gains are speeding up the underlying performance of their products. So Emi and I kept meeting up and I'm thrilled that @chemistry is co-leading their $40M Series A alongside @MarathonMP, @ycombinator and many angels. Congrats @gpuemi, @gpusteve, and team. @kshenster, @Mark_Goldberg_, @loubohan and I are excited to be on team Wafer for the road ahead.
    @snowmakerWhen I met @gpusteve and @gpuemi 18 months ago, they were undergrads at UChicago who weren't planning to start a company. Today they're announcing their $40M Series A. This is how they got there.
    @garrytanRT @gokulr: Great interview with @gpuemi and @gpusteve, which showcases why we at @MarathonMP (+ @Chemistry + @snowmaker / @ycombinator +…
    @gpustevethis is AI
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