Startup Verta Inc. launched from stealth mode today with $10 million in fresh funding and an enterprise machine learning product based on ModelDB, a popular open-source tool for managing artificial intelligence projects. 

ModelDB was created by Verta Chief Executive Officer Manasi Vartak (pictured) during her doctoral research at MIT. The tool enables AI teams to set up an archive containing all the versions of a machine learning model created over its lifespan.

Storing these versions is important because models go through frequent changes and engineers require a clear view of those changes for various reasons, such as to help them find technical issues. Verta’s enterprise product incorporates ModelDB’s feature set and adds in a number of value-added capabilities. The extra capabilities mainly focus on simplifying the process of deploying an AI to production after initial development is done. 

Normally, readying an AI for deployment can take months because it requires companies to build “brittle ML pipelines” from scratch, Vartak explained in a blog post today. The startup’s product promises to ease the task by automating several of the steps involved in the model rollout process. It can take a company’s newly developed neural network, turn it into a software container and make it accessible via an application programming interface. 

“Once a data science model is registered with Verta, the platform will package, optimize, and run this model without any additional intervention from the data scientist,” Vartak wrote.

The new $10 million in funding announced today will help the startup drive adoption of its software. The round was led by Intel Corp.’s startup investment arm with participation from prolific venture capital General Catalyst. Verta earlier raised a seed round backed by General Catalyst, Village Global and other investors.

The startup says a number of organizations are already using its platform in production. Among them is “one of the world’s leading workplace collaboration companies” and sales technology startup LeadCrunch.ai Inc., which says it has cut model deployment times by a factor of 10 since adopting Verta’s product.   

Photo: Verta