Cake, a managed open-source AI infrastructure platform, has raised $13 million in a seed funding round to bring advanced AI capabilities to mid-market companies. The round was led by Gradient, Google’s early-stage AI fund, with participation from Primary Venture Partners, Alumni Ventures, Friends & Family Capital, Correlation Ventures, Firestreak Ventures, and several industry veterans.
Cake simplifies the deployment, integration, and management of popular open-source AI technologies, enabling businesses to quickly adopt cutting-edge AI without requiring extensive engineering resources. The platform provides a seamless way to turn innovative AI into production-ready infrastructure, making state-of-the-art AI more accessible to companies struggling with engineering bandwidth.
“Our goal is to make advanced AI available to businesses of all sizes,” said Misha Herscu, CEO and co-founder of Cake. “While large ML engineering teams have historically had access to these technologies, Cake enables companies across industries like financial services, healthcare, and e-commerce to deploy AI in days or even hours, without needing a large engineering team.”
Cake’s platform combines the power of the open-source community with robust features such as security, user management, cost optimization, and system monitoring. It also supports regular updates for open-source AI packages, ensuring that clients stay current without disrupting existing deployments.
Scott Stafford, CTO of Ping Data Intelligence, an insurtech platform, emphasized the value of Cake’s solution: “Using Cake is like having two to three technical hires without the need for additional FTEs. It gives us confidence to stay agile and competitive in a fast-evolving AI landscape.”
Darian Shirazi, Managing Partner at Gradient, added, “Cake has built a product that addresses the challenges businesses face when deploying AI models. The team’s deep customer engagement and willingness to collaborate have been impressive.”
