FriendliAI Bags $20M to Slash AI Infrastructure Expenses by 90%
California-based AI inference startup, FriendliAI, has successfully secured a $20 million seed extension round. The funding round was spearheaded by Capstone Partners, and saw participation from Sierra Ventures, Alumni Ventures, KDB Investment, and KB Securities. This funding is set to expedite the development of the company’s platform, which aims to deliver up to 90% GPU cost savings for AI deployments.
Byung-Gon Chun, the CEO of FriendliAI, underscored the paramount importance of AI inference. He highlighted that currently, 80% to 90% of GPUs are now committed to inference rather than training. “The AI inference market is burgeoning as more and more organizations transition from AI experimentation to production deployment,” he expressed.
FriendliAI has already forged partnerships with industry giants, including LG AI Research. It has become the exclusive API provider for LG’s EXAONE 4.0 foundation model. The company anticipates its revenue to skyrocket to 6-7 times higher in 2025 compared to 2024. This surge is expected to be fueled by the accelerating adoption of generative AI in production environments.
Source: https://news.crunchbase.com/ai/inference-platform-friendliai-raises-seed-extension-chun/