Startups

Weights & Biases raises $135M Series C to keep building MLOps software

Comment

Image Credits: Vladyslav Bobuskyi / Getty Images

Update: The round in question was $135 million, not $100 million as originally noted. I apologize for the mistake!

What do you call AI these days? ML in a suit.

ML, or machine learning, is a big market today. That is thanks to modern corporations accreting data like hoarders and data science maturing as a work category. Evidence of the former can be found in the growth posted by Databricks in recent quarters, and the latter by just how much cash Big Tech companies are willing to drop on ML-focused roles.

The market that Weights & Biases plays in, then, is active these days. That makes it not a huge surprise that the startup just raised more than $135 million in a supersized Series C. The company is now worth around $1 billion, it said in a release. Felicis, Insight Partners, Bond and Coatue contributed to the deal.

According to Carta data, data and analytics-focused Series C rounds since the start of 2020 have median values of $43.75 million, and median resulting valuations (post-money) of around $416 million. That makes this round effectively a double-up on what we might expect the company to raise, given historical data.

In product terms, Weights & Biases plays in the “MLOps” space, or the machine learning operations market. MLOps is analogous to DevOps, naturally, despite being a newer category.

Image Credits: Weights & Biases. The product in question.

According to Weights & Biases co-founder Lukas Biewald, the software world has a set of tools built for developers to write and deploy code well. This could include a git-style service (GitLab, GitHub, etc.), monitoring (Atlassian, Datadog, etc.), and the like.

His company’s goal, he explained, is to build a similar stack of services for the ML world. And today, he explained, many ML teams are working with ad-hoc tooling or simply without software assistance.

The need for such a stack could be stark. A difference between the development and the ML world, according to Biewald, is that while code crashes when it fails, ML work can “behave badly” in more subtle ways.

Enter Weights & Biases, naturally. The startup’s product life started with experiment tracking, which Biewald likened to code versioning in the DevOps stack. Git, he explained, while great for versioning code that humans write, is somewhat poor at handling different versions of computer-generated code, like that which comes from machine learning work. That’s the sort of issue that Weights & Biases wants to take on.

The effort is certainly attracting investor attention. Felicis investor Aydin Senkut told TechCrunch that he’d had his eye on Weights & Biases for some time, but that other investors wound up leading its preceding two rounds. This time ’round, Senkut got into the cap table by pre-empting the company. Per Biewald, Weights & Biases would have raised a similar round, albeit later, if Felicis hadn’t led the charge.

TechCrunch dug into the startup’s pricing scheme prior to chatting with the company. Its price list looked inexpensive compared to the productivity that Weights & Biases appears intent on delivering as its builds out its service. Note that this is not a compliment per se; underpricing is a way to transfer value from the company — and investors — to customers in the near term.

Biewald said that Weights & Biases is pricing its service so that it is easy for anyone to access. Senkut added that amid customer checks executed by Felicis during its diligence for the investment, clients said that the startup was underpricing its service by a factor of three.

The investor added that he was excited by the prospect as other companies like Shopify had pursued similarly long-term greed over near-term incomes.

Frankly, I am intrigued by what Weights & Biases seems to want to build. Let’s see how far a nine-figure check that came early can get the company. The next time we talk, it will be time to home in on growth metrics more precisely and check in on the margin impacts of its free service (unless, of course, it sticks that particular item in its sales and marketing expense line item).

More TechCrunch

Meta launched its Meta Verified program today along with other features, such as the ability to call large businesses and custom messages.

Meta rolls out Meta Verified for WhatsApp Business users in Brazil, India, Indonesia and Colombia

Last year, during the Q3 2023 earnings call, Mark Zuckerberg talked about leveraging AI to have business accounts respond to customers for purchase and support queries. Today, Meta announced AI-powered…

Meta adds AI-powered features to WhatsApp Business app

TikTok is testing streaks that are similar to Snapchat’s in order to boost engagement, including how long people stay on the app.

TikTok is testing Snapchat-like streaks

Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility — your central hub for news and insights on the future of transportation. Sign up here for free — just click TechCrunch Mobility! Your usual…

Inside Fisker’s collapse and robotaxis come to more US cities

New York-based Revel has made a lot of pivots since initially launching in 2018 as a dockless e-moped sharing service. The BlackRock-backed startup briefly stepped into the e-bike subscription business.…

Revel to lay off 1,000 staff ride-hail drivers, saying they’d rather be contractors anyway

Google says apps offering AI features will have to prevent the generation of restricted content.

Google Play cracks down on AI apps after circulation of apps for making deepfake nudes

The British retailers association also takes aim at Amazon’s “Buy Box,” claiming that Amazon manipulated which retailers were selected for the coveted placement.

UK retailers file a £1.1B collective action against Amazon over claims of data misuse

Featured Article

Rivian overhauled the R1S and R1T to entice new buyers ahead of cheaper R2 launch

Rivian has changed 600 parts on its R1S SUV and R1T pickup truck in a bid to drive down manufacturing costs, while improving performance of its flagship vehicles.  The end goal, which will play out over the coming year, is an existential one. Rivian lost about $38,784 on every vehicle…

3 hours ago
Rivian overhauled the R1S and R1T to entice new buyers ahead of cheaper R2 launch

Twitch has come up with a solution for the ongoing copyright issues that DJs encounter on the platform. The company announced Thursday a new program that enables DJs to stream…

Twitch DJs will now have to pay music labels to play songs in livestreams

Google said today it is partnering with RapidSOS, a platform for emergency first responders, to enable users to contact 911 through RCS (Rich Messaging Service).

Google partners with RapidSOS to enable 911 contact through RCS

Long before product-led growth became a buzzword, Atlassian offered free tiers for virtually all of its productivity and developer tools. Today, that mostly means free access for up to ten…

Atlassian now gives startups a year of free access

Featured Article

A social app for creatives, Cara grew from 40k to 650k users in a week because artists are fed up with Meta’s AI policies

Artists have finally had enough with Meta’s predatory AI policies, but Meta’s loss is Cara’s gain. An artist-run, anti-AI social platform, Cara has grown from 40,000 to 650,000 users within the last week, catapulting it to the top of the App Store charts. Instagram is a necessity for many artists,…

3 hours ago
A social app for creatives, Cara grew from 40k to 650k users in a week because artists are fed up with Meta’s AI policies

Google has developed a new AI tool to help marine biologists better understand coral reef ecosystems and their health, which can aid in conversation efforts. The tool, SurfPerch, created with…

Google looks to AI to help save the coral reefs

Only a few years ago, one of the hottest topics in enterprise software was ‘robotic process automation’ (RPA). It doesn’t feel like those services, which tried to automate a lot…

Tektonic AI raises $10M to build GenAI agents for automating business operations

SpaceX achieved a key milestone in its Starship flight test campaign: returning the booster and the upper stage back to Earth.

SpaceX launches mammoth Starship rocket and brings it back for the first time

There’s a lot of buzz about generative AI and what impact it might have on businesses. But look beyond the hype and high-profile deals like the one between OpenAI and…

Sirion, now valued around $1B, acquires Eigen as consolidation comes to enterprise AI tooling

Carlo Kobe and Scott Smith believed so strongly in the need for a debit card product designed specifically for Gen Zers that they dropped out of Harvard and Cornell at…

Kleiner Perkins leads $14.4M seed round into Fizz, a credit-building debit card aimed at Gen Z college students

A new app called MyGlimpact is intended not only to help people understand their environmental footprint, but why they shouldn’t feel guilty about it.

How many Earths does your lifestyle require?

Prolific Machines believes it has a way of transitioning away from molecules to something better: light.

Prolific Machines, with a $55M Series B, shines ‘light’ on a better way to grow lab proteins for food and medicine

It’s been 20 years since Shira Yevin, the lead singer of punk band Shiragirl drove a pink RV into the Vans Warped Tour grounds, the now-defunct punk rock festival notorious…

Punk singer Shira Yevin pushes for fair pay with InPink, a women-focused job marketplace

While the transport industry does use legacy software, many of these platforms are from an earlier era. Qargo hopes its newer technologies can help it leapfrog the competition.

Qargo raises $14M to digitize and decarbonize the trucking industry

When you look at how generative AI is being implemented across developer tools, the focus for the most part has been on generating code, as with Github Copilot. Greptile, an…

Greptile raises $4M to build an AI-fueled code base expert

The models tended to answer questions inconsistently, which reflects biases embedded in the data used to train the models.

Study finds that AI models hold opposing views on controversial topics

A growing number of businesses are embracing data models — abstract models that organize elements of data and standardize how they relate to one another. But as the data analytics…

Cube is building a ‘semantic layer’ for company data

Stock-trading app Robinhood is diving deeper into the cryptocurrency realm with the acquisition of crypto exchange Bitstamp.

Robinhood acquires global crypto exchange Bitstamp for $200M

Torpago’s Powered By product is geared for regional and community banks, with under $20 billion in assets, to launch their own branded cards and spend management programs.

Fintech Torpago has a unique way to compete with Brex and Ramp: turning banks into customers

Over half of Americans wear corrective glasses or contact lenses. While there isn’t a shortage of low-cost and luxury frames available online or in stores, consumers can only buy them…

Eyebot raised $6M for AI-powered kiosks that provide 90-second vision exams without an optometrist

Google on Thursday said it is rolling out NotebookLM, its AI-powered note-taking assistant, to over 200 new countries, nearly six months after opening its access in the U.S. The platform,…

Google’s updated AI-powered NotebookLM expands to India, UK and over 200 other countries

Inflation and currency devaluation have always been a growing concern for Africans with bank accounts.

Starting in war-torn Sudan, YC-backed Elevate now provides fintech to freelancers globally

Featured Article

Amazon buys Indian video streaming service MX Player

Amazon has agreed to acquire key assets of Indian video streaming service MX Player from the local media powerhouse Times Internet, the latest step by the e-commerce giant to make its services and brand popular in smaller cities and towns in the key overseas market.  The two firms reached a…

11 hours ago
Amazon buys Indian video streaming service MX Player