UPDATED 09:00 EDT / JUNE 16 2020

AI

Google fund co-leads $21M round into AI app development startup Streamlit

Streamlit Inc., the startup behind a new but already widely used artificial intelligence application framework, today announced that it has raised a $21 million funding round co-led by Google LLC’s Gradient Ventures fund and GGV Capital.

Streamlit’s open-source framework, also called Streamlit, eases the process of building AI applications. The software launched only last October and has since amassed a large installed base that has already used it to create over 200,000 applications. Streamlit’s users include engineers from Twitter Inc., Dropbox Inc., Uber Technologies Inc. and other major tech firms.

The framework was born from challenges Streamlit Chief Executive Officer Adrien Treuille encountered while working on AI projects at self-driving startup Zoox Inc. and Google’s X lab. Treuille, a former Carnegie Mellon professor, observed that AI applications often start out as relatively simple prototypes on an engineer’s computer. Turning a prototype into a production-ready application usable on a large scale can take months and often requires multiple software teams. 

Streamlit promises to speed up the process. The framework provides ready-made building blocks for creating AI software that the startup claims can dramatically reduce development times. These building blocks include tools that help engineers organize and manage the data their AI processes, visualize the results and build graphical interfaces so users can interact with the neural network.

Streamlit uses Python as its programming language. The framework allows developers to write their Python-based AI applications in popular code editors such as Visual Studio Code, works with tools such as GitHub and supports TensorFlow.

The Streamlit team claims that the framework makes it possible to build a AI application in as little as few hours. The startup has created a demo application as a reference for new users that can search the multigigabyte Udacity autonomous vehicle dataset, then use object recognition to identify cars and pedestrians with just 300 lines of code. Delta Dental Insurance Co. has used Streamlit to build an AI for analyzing call center traffic in three months that, according to the startup, would’ve otherwise taken a year to develop.

“On the one hand, Streamlit ‘apps’ are just simple Python scripts which can be created in minutes, and instantly shared, collaborated upon, or even forked and remixed,” Treuille told SiliconANGLE. “On the other, Streamlit handles all the DevOps so that simple data scripts can be progressively evolved into long-lived, production data apps.”

Streamlit will use the new $21 million funding to ramp up product development efforts.”The funding will accelerate development of Streamlit’s free, open-source software, expanding the types of apps that people can create with Streamlit,” Treuille said. “To keep up with the project’s hypergrowth, a key focus will be APIs that allow the data community to add additional functionality to Streamlit.”

To commercialize its work, the startup is building a paid cloud service for enterprises. Called Streamlit for Teams, it provides features for deploying, scaling and securing AI applications created with the framework. 

Besides Google’s Gradient Ventures and GGV Capital, Streamlit is also backed by Bloomberg Beta, Y Combinator partner Daniel Gross and a number of angel investors. 

Image: Streamlit

 


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