San Francisco startup- Weights & Biases that develops machine learning tools for engineers, has reportedly raised USD 45 million in a Series B funding round led by Insight Partners and saw the participation of Trinity Ventures, Coatue, and Bloomberg Beta. For the record, the firm was established by Chris Van Pelt, Shawn Lewis, and Lukas Biewald, and now has over 70,000 users at nearly 200 enterprises.
In a statement by Lukas Biewald, Weights & Biases is an early leader in the market, and with the introduction of competitive tools, the company is differentiated since it completely focuses on ML practitioners instead of top-down enterprise sales. With the growing adoption of machine learning, Weights & Biases at times meets a “high-class problem”, he further added.
Biewald also stated that the startup is keen on trading with companies that are using machine learning to work on something useful. For instance, prominent agriculture company- John Deere is using the startup’s novel platform to enhance how they use robotics to spray fertilizers, instead of pesticides to kill pests and weeds. Additionally, some pharmaceutical giants are using the technology for how they wish to model how different molecules behave.
Apparently, Weights & Biases secured USD 20 million in funding in the previous round.
According to George Mathew, Managing Director, Insight Partners who has also joined the Board of Directors of Weights & Biases, the American MLOps category startup has a very high NPS and a deep customer focus. The company has also witnessed an increase in its user base by 60x times in the last two years.
Seemingly, with the raised funds, the company will continue to hire in sales, engineering, and customer services to expand its offering.
Source Credit: https://techcrunch.com/2021/02/01/weights-and-biases-series-b/