Sakana AI, a Tokyo-based synthetic intelligence startup co-founded by two notable ex-Google engineers, introduced right now that it has raised $30 million in seed funding from high-profile expertise buyers. The younger firm, based simply final 12 months, goals to take a unique method to AI by creating smaller, extra environment friendly fashions impressed by nature.
The seed spherical was led by Lux Capital, which has invested in pioneering AI corporations like Hugging Face, and likewise Khosla Ventures, recognized for investing in OpenAI approach again in 2019. Japanese tech giants Sony, NTT and KDDI additionally participated within the spherical, marking a vote of confidence in Sakana from main home gamers.
Sakana, which implies “fish” in Japanese, takes its inspiration from the collective behaviors of animal teams like colleges of fish and flocks of birds. The startup believes that getting smaller AI fashions to work collectively effectively will be more practical than coaching single gigantic fashions on large datasets, an method that many main AI labs have pursued.
Sakana co-founders David Ha and Llion Jones beforehand led AI analysis teams at Google. Jones co-authored a landmark paper on the Transformer mannequin in 2017 that underpins chatbots like OpenAI’s ChatGPT right now.
Sakana’s method stands out at a time when the AI subject has fixated on scaling up fashions to beat benchmarks by sheer dimension. This tactic has produced spectacular outcomes, but in addition led to backlash over the computing sources and environmental influence required to coach and run colossal AI techniques.
Sakana execs argue that enormous fashions change into inefficient as they balloon in dimension, whereas smaller, specialised fashions can collaborate to match the capabilities. The startup likens it to how teams of individuals every with distinct expertise outperform lone polymaths at advanced jobs.
The founding group’s pedigree and various imaginative and prescient have been sufficient to draw prime Silicon Valley and home Japanese buyers to fund Sakana’s Tokyo lab after only one 12 months of working independently. With contemporary capital and partnerships with the likes of NTT, the corporate will look to workers up and additional develop its nature-inspired AI methods.
Early-stage backing from U.S. and Japanese tech heavyweights alerts confidence that Sakana may pioneer a brand new AI paradigm from Asia, whereas giving Japan affect in a strategic expertise the place the U.S. and China have dominated up to now.
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