Artificial intelligence and machine learning model testing startup Kolena Inc. announced today that it has raised $15 million in new funding to fuel its mission to revolutionize how AI systems and tested and validated.

Founded in 2021, Kolena offers an AI and ML testing platform that allows teams to rigorously test model behavior. The platform allows enterprises and teams to assemble highly specific test cases from the data sets that power their AI models, enabling evaluation of each model’s effectiveness in key scenarios and applications.

Kolena argues that companies have been hesitant to fully embrace AI without a comprehensive solution to test and validate the robustness, fairness, factualness and bias of AI systems. Headlines featuring high-profile AI failures have further emphasized the need for a standardized and rigorous framework for AI quality assurance to provide visibility into a model’s performance in the precise scenarios they’ll be entrusted to handle in the real world. That’s where Kolena is focused.

The company’s platform offers what is described as a “fine-grained” testing approach that allows teams to root out unexpected model behavior such as biased hiring algorithms, false positives or misclassifications in critical healthcare applications and other failure modes. The solution also assists teams and enterprises in launching their models more quickly by eliminating the need for time-consuming experimentation-based testing.

Kolena has seen strong growth, counting several Fortune 500 companies, leading AI startups and government organizations among its customers.

The Series A round was led by Lobby Capital LLC, with SignalFire Inc., Bloomberg Beta LP, 11.2 Capital LP and Zero Prime Ventures LLC also participating. The funding will be used for research and development to build the company’s AI quality framework and toolings that empower businesses to build trustworthy AI systems.

“It’s no secret that unpredictable behavior by AI and ML models is one of the key constraints holding back more widespread AI adoption,” Lobby Capital founder Eric Carlborg said in a statement. “Enterprises cannot risk deploying a model as part of their tech stack — much less as part of a customer-facing application — without assurance that it is safe, reliable and fair.”

Carlborg added that Kolena’s solution solves fundamental challenges by “bringing rigor and visibility to the testing process that goes far beyond ‘statistical accuracy’ while simultaneously transforming testing from an inefficient manual process into a true engineering discipline.”

Image: Kolena