Data science startup Zerve secures $3.8 million of pre-seed funding

Irish-based data science and AI startup Zerve has raised $3.8 million in its pre-seed funding to build a new architecture for Data Science & AI development.

The company has created a coding platform tailored for data science and AI development that allows teams to collaborate and share their outputs more easily. Zerve’s cloud-based, serverless technology utilizes a novel, stateful architecture to create a scalable, collaborative development environment. The tool helps break down the silos that can exist between data scientists and developers.

Zerve was co-founded in  2021, by college friends Phily Hayes (ex-LearnUpon and Deloitte) and Jason Hillary, PhD, Engineering, and later joined by Greg Michaelson, former Chief Customer Officer of DataRobot. The company is currently one of ten startups chosen from Europe to participate in Intel’s Ignite Accelerator program for deep-tech companies. Since 2019, the 148 companies that have gone through the programme have raised over €1.6bn.

Phily Hayes, CEO & co-founder of Zerve said, “Data scientists have never really been able to seamlessly share both their code and their results with their colleagues. The existing tools available are fragmented. It makes it hard to be productive. With Zerve, all the teams can collaborate live and build something stable enough to deploy. In much the same way as Figma made design collaborative, Zerve is poised to bring this innovation in the data science coding space.”

Greg Michaelson, co-founder of Zerve said, “Zerve brings about an architectural paradigm shift. We’re dedicated to building Zerve to not only enhance the capabilities of data science but also to empower data scientists to deliver effortlessly in the era of AI.”

Elkstone Ventures (Flipdish, LetsGetChecked, Manna) led the funding round, with contributions from prominent angel investors, such as Sean Mullaney, CTO of Algolia, and Rob Hickey, former EVP of Engineering at DataRobot.

Niall McEvoy, Partner at Elkstone Ventures said, “Zerve has an ambitious vision of bridging the gap between data science and AI development. The team has built a technology that will really allow companies to break down silos and harness the power of AI and data science and has the potential to do to data science what Figma did for design”.

Zerve currently has 12 employees and aims to hire across Engineering, Cloud Infrastructure, and Research and Development.

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