Portkey.ai raises $3m to accelerate generative AI apps

The surging popularity of ChatGPT and intensifying market competition have prompted businesses to venture into AI app development. However, constrained by time and budget limitations, enterprises seek efficient solutions to expedite their foray into the AI landscape.

Addressing this challenge, Portkey.ai announced the completion of a $3 million seed funding round, aimed at empowering engineering teams to swiftly construct and launch generative AI applications.

The funding initiative, spearheaded by Lightspeed and bolstered by investments from distinguished angel investors including luminaries from AWS, OpenAI, Cloudflare, Postman, and Asana, underscores Portkey.ai’s vision for streamlined AI app development. Co-founded in January 2023 by Rohit Agarwal and Ayush Garg, Portkey.ai leverages their extensive experience in product development and go-to-market strategies for AI products built atop Large Language Models (LLMs).

Portkey.ai has developed a suite of tools that facilitate efficient monitoring of Language Model Operations (LLMOps), seamless integration with multiple extensive Language Models (LLMs), productive experimentation, enhanced prompt management, and continual improvements.

The platform boasts deep integrations with industry leaders such as OpenAI, Anthropic, Langchain, LlamaIndex, and others. Presently, they manage millions of daily requests for pioneering Gen AI companies such as Postman, Jio Haptik, and Springworks, using their comprehensive full stack LLMOps solution.

Commenting on the announcement, Rohit Agarwal, co-founder of Portkey.ai, stated, “Technology leaders are confronted with a surge in demand from teams seeking efficient AI apps that deliver cost savings without undue delays. However, the intricate workload often leads to conflicting priorities. Portkey.ai aims to alleviate these challenges for technology teams. Our aspiration for Portkey.ai revolves around empowering teams and corporations to confidently deploy Gen AI apps and features.”

The Portkey.ai platform provides enterprises building Gen AI features with access to Azure & Llama2, incorporating intelligent routing to achieve over 25% budget savings through intelligent caching, and comprehensive request monitoring for accuracy and latency.

Constructing a similar platform internally would entail months of effort, multiple iterations, and extensive expertise with LLMs, while Portkey.ai facilitates such readiness within a mere 2-minute timeframe.

Kartik Mandaville, CEO of Springworks, recounted the transformative role of Portkey.ai in their AI-first employee help desk project, “During the development of Albus, we encountered the challenge of managing over 10 000 daily queries. The complexities of cost management, latency, and rate limiting on OpenAI were becoming overwhelming. Portkey.ai stepped in, offering invaluable support via its analytics and semantic caching solutions.”

The newly secured funding will propel Portkey.ai towards business scalability, encompassing technological advancements and team expansion. Dev Khare, Partner at Lightspeed, expressed enthusiasm, stating, “We are thrilled to collaborate with Portkey.ai in their endeavor to empower teams engaged in LLM-based applications and copilots for business and consumer domains. Additionally, we are equally impressed by the founding duo of Rohit and Ayush, who possess a decade-long track record in shepherding projects from inception to fruition.”

Angel investor Sanjeev Sisodiya added, “We invested in Portkey.ai due to their unique background in deploying and scaling LLM applications in real-world scenarios. Their profound comprehension of challenges and opportunities in this pivotal sector holds great promise, and we eagerly anticipate witnessing their contributions to the global software ecosystem.”

Portkey.ai, with a robust global presence and a significant user base in the United States, envisions a future marked by enriched AI application development for its rapidly expanding customer portfolio.

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