Reka, an AI model firm formed by former DeepMind (GOOGL.O) researchers, raised $50 million from DST Global Partners and Snowflake (SNOW.N), according to Reuters.
The deal valuation was not disclosed. The source assessed Reka, which began last year with no revenue, at $300 million.
Reka builds complex enterprise AI models. Snowflake, which invested in the firm, has partnered to let users run third-party model providers like Reka in their accounts.
“The bigger opportunity is how we take some of these smaller, more customized models and be able to bring them to run inside Snowflake so that we can give customers the guarantee that if you’re using this model, the privacy of your data is guaranteed,” said Christian Kleinerman, Snowflake’s senior vice president of product, who also announced a partnership with Nvidia to give enterprises Nvidia’s software stack to build AI models.
Snowflake competitor Databricks acquired MosacicML for $1.3 billion on Monday, prompting the alliances.
CEO Dani Yogatama said Reka would use the funding to buy Nvidia computing power and establish a commercial team.
Reka enters a competitive industry of constructing massive language models for enterprise applications as organizations scramble to implement the AI technology that made ChatGPT popular to boost efficiency.
Yogatama said Reka uses huge models and proprietary model distillation technology to customize models for specific use cases. It models text, images, videos, and structured data.
“I think small models are going to represent a massive paradigm shift as enterprises are getting more serious about deploying AI models at scale,” said Radical Ventures partner Rob Toews, who invested in Reka.
