Artificial intelligence startups are emerging as a magnet for venture capital investment. Today, it was the San Francisco-based Skymind Inc. that took the spotlight after raising $3 million in funding from Chinese web giant Tencent Holdings Ltd., Y Combinator and three other early-stage backers.

The group joins an already impressive list of investors that includes Lookout Security Inc. co-founder Kevin Mahafey and Muse frontman Matthew Bellamy. Deepmind will use the capital to spread the word about its open-source Deeplearning4j framework, which promises to speed up the development of artificial intelligence applications. The project distinguishes itself from the numerous free alternatives out there by providing a number of value-added features specifically geared towards the requirements of large enterprises.

The library’s first big advantage is that it’s written in Java, the go-to programming language in the corporate world, which makes it somewhat easier to adopt than academia-oriented deep learning engines like the Python-based Therano. And Deeplearning4j also stands out from newer Java-based competitors like Google’s TensorFlow thanks to the fact that Deepmind provides commercial support currently not matched by the search giant. The ability to call a service reprehensive for help when a problem arises is potentially just as valuable for a traditional enterprise as having an API written in a language familiar to its developers, if not more so.

Last but not least, Deeplearning4j provides integration with Hadoop and Spark that enables organizations to take advantage of their existing analytics infrastructure for deep learning projects. Skymind is introducing a commercial version of the framework against the backdrop of today’s funding that expands upon this interoperability with certified support for Cloudera Inc. and Hortonwokrs Inc.’s Hadoop distributors, plus a number of complementary technologies like Kafka. The startup says that its platform can even be deployed in OpenStack clusters.

And Skymind further claims that the platform is better optimized for Intel Corp.’s newest-generation Xeon Phi server CPUs, IBM Corp.’s POWER series processors and Nvidia Corp. GPUs than the upstream project. This functionality improves hardware utilization and thus makes it possible to train artificial intelligence algorithms faster.

A large portion of the funds from today’s investment will be used to drive the adoption of Skymind’s commercial offering. The startup has big target market to work with: Deeplearning4j is used by more than 10 million developers around the world.

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