Weights and Biases, a US-based developer of machine learning (ML) analysis technology, has secured $45m in a series B round featuring Bloomberg Beta, the big data-focused investment firm sponsored by media group Bloomberg.
Venture capital firm Insight Partners led the round, which also featured investment management firm Coatue, VC firm Trinity Ventures and Tom Preston-Werner, founder of software development platform GitHub.
Founded in 2018, Weights and Biases provides development tools for ML research teams to a customer base of some 70,000 users, helping them to collaborate on ML models and operations (MLOps).
Lukas Biewald, CEO of Weights and Biases, said: “Machine learning has suddenly gone from a research topic to scaled-out MLOps for a large number of global enterprises. Software developers have high quality tools for every part of their workflow, but ML practitioners are still in the dark ages.
“You cannot have AI safety if ML teams can’t systematically track the models they build and the datasets they use. This funding allows us to expand the category leading products for ML practitioners that we are known for.”
Bloomberg Beta and Trinity Ventures co-led the company’s $5m series A round in 2018 before Coatue led a $15m series B in May 2019 that included private investors Nat Friedman and Richard Socher.
