The round saw participation from Perplexity CTO Denis Yarats, Kleiner Perkins Scout Fund, Y Combinator, Snorkel AI CEO Alex Ratner, among others
The fresh capital will be used to accelerate product development, particularly in AI agents and multimodal systems
The startup's platform helps enterprises build and monitor AI applications, including large-scale chatbots serving over 100 Mn users
Athina AI, which operates on a SaaS model, has secured $3 Mn (INR 25 Cr) in a seed funding round from a clutch of investors, including Perplexity CTO Denis Yarats, Snorkel AI CEO Alex Ratner, Kleiner Perkins Scout Fund and Y Combinator among others.
With this, the startup claims to have raised $4.1 Mn in total funding so far.
Founded by Himanshu Bamoria and Shiv Sakhuja, Athina AI offers an end-to-end platform that helps companies build and monitor production-grade AI applications.
The platform enables companies to run experiments with prompts and models, collaborate across technical and non-technical team members, and monitor AI performance in production. It helps teams figure out metrics around AI output accuracy and performance.
The startup counts several unicorns among its enterprise clients, including Perplexity, Meesho, PhysicsWallah, and listed company Doximity. The majority of its paying customers are mid-market companies and enterprises based in the US.
“Most of this funding amount would go into making the product better so that we can cater to evolving demands from our customers. As the whole landscape changes and new demands come up, we want to improve the product to support all these requirements,” Bamoria told Inc42.
“Our vision is to help companies build production-grade AI applications. Currently, we’re focusing more on helping people build reliable AI agents,” he added.
The company recently moved its headquarters from India to San Francisco.
The startup claims to have previously raised an undisclosed amount in its pre-seed funding round led by Flourish Ventures, GSF India, IndiaMART founder Dinesh Agarwal, Matrimony.com founder Murugavel Janakiraman, and Zomato cofounder Mohit Gupta.
The funding comes at a time when AI development tools are seeing increased demand.
According to Inc42 reports, artificial intelligence market size is expected to grow from $387.45 Bn in 2022 to over $1.3 Tn by 2029. Currently, 85% of Indian SaaS companies have adopted AI, with over 1.5K AI-powered SaaS startups in India.
The round follows other notable investments in the AI development space. Recently, AI SaaS startup Ennoventure raised $8.9 Mn in Series A funding led by Tanglin Venture Partners. Earlier this month, BiteSpeed secured $3.5 Mn in Pre-Series A funding led by Peak XV Partner’s Surge to expand its AI offerings for ecommerce players.
