Irish Data Science and AI Start-up Zerve Secures $3.8 Million in Upfront Funding

Zerve, an Irish startup specializing in data science and artificial intelligence, has secured $3.8 million in upfront funding to bolster its research and development capabilities. The company plans to expand its staff, doubling its current team of 12 over the next year to support its engineering, cloud infrastructure and R&D teams.

The aim of the platform developed by Zerve is to enable data scientists to work together simultaneously. Co-founder Philly Hayes described the company’s architectural vision as one that promotes exploratory data analysis and code development for production quality. He believes that data science should move from a solo pursuit to a multiplayer endeavor, similar to what Figma has done for design by allowing designers to collaborate in real-time. Funding from the pre-seed round gives Zerve the opportunity to realize and capitalize on its vision.

Zerve was led by Elkstone Ventures in the pre-seed round, with contributions from angel investors including Algolia CTO Sean Mullaney and former DataRobot EVP engineer Rob Hickey. Niall McEvoy, partner at Elkstone Ventures, praised Zerve’s ambition to bridge the gap between data science and AI development, highlighting the potential of its technology to break down silos and harness the power of AI and data science. In addition to securing funding, Zerve was also selected as one of 10 European startups for the Intel Ignite Accelerator program, which is tailored to companies with deep technology.

Zerve’s CEO identified fragmented tools available for sharing code and results with colleagues as a barrier to productivity among data scientists. He hinted at the need for a single platform like Zerve to address this issue and allow data scientists