Artificial intelligence startup Fiddler Labs Inc. said today it has raised $10.2 million in new funding to build out its AI Engine.

The Series A round was led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and Lux Capital and included Haystack Ventures and Bloomberg Beta.

Founded last October by Krishna Gade (pictured, right), formerly an engineer manager at Facebook Inc., and Amit Paka (left), previously a senior product manager at Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., Fiddler Labs is aiming to address visibility in AI with an engine that allows companies to analyze, manage and deploy their machine learning models at scale.

“Fiddler aims to unlock the mysteries of ‘black box AI’ and interpret the rationale behind these platform’s decisions,” a spokesperson for Fiddler Labs told SiliconANGLE. “The company was founded on two ideals: AI will play a beneficial role in business, but also realize there are severe implications if no insight or visibility into AI is available. Every company will need an explainability platform that can demystify AI, making it understandable and accessible throughout their organization.”

Better understanding AI decisions is key to Fiddlers’ explainability platform with Paka, who worked on AI-driven product recommendations for a shopping app at Samsung finding that it was difficult to understand the decisions the AI would occasionally make. Unlocking what the company describes as the AI black box by providing a transparent, trustworthy and operational approach to analyzing and managing AI solutions and programs is the endgame.

“Businesses understand the value AI provides, but they struggle with the ‘why’ and the ‘how’ when using traditional black box AI,” Gade said in a statement. “Businesses need to de-risk their AI investments, but most applications today aren’t equipped to help them do that. Our AI Engine is grounded in explainability, so those affected by the technology can understand why decisions were made and course-correct as needed to ensure the AI outputs are ethical, responsible and fair.”

Not quite a year old, Fiddler is already working with a number of Fortune 500 businesses in banking, finance and financial technology, according to VentureBeat.

Including the new funding, Fiddler Labs has raised $13.2 million to date.

Photo: Lux Capital