Jun 2, 2023

AI startup MindsDB just raised a $25 million seed extension round led by Mayfield. The round comes less than three months after it raised a $16.5 million round led by Benchmark. MindsDB's software helps developers use machine learning to build AI applications easily. The founders of MindsDB aims to help software developers worldwide perform the roles of machine-learning engineers. The company's software allows developers to take their massive amounts of data and apply machine-learning frameworks to their applications. It also integrates with over 100 different data sources, including machine-learning engines like OpenAI and Hugging Face. Founded in 2017, MindsDB is now gaining the interest of investors as AI has become the talk of the town in tech. In February, the startup announced $16.5 million in funding led by Benchmark . And now, less than three months later, the startup has raised another $25 million in a seed round extension, this time led by Mayfield Fund and its managing director Navin Chaddha . Benchmark and TQ Ventures also participated in the round. "We believe there is a once in a generation opportunity," Chaddha said of MindsDB's technology, which sits in a unique area between AI frameworks and data layers. "That's why we are excited that this middle tier will allow any developer to build AI applications without knowing anything about ML [machine learning] or artificial intelligence." MindDB's cofounders Jorge Torres and Adam Carrigan were college buddies at The Australian National University and started the company well before machine-learning and AI became household terms. The company's software initially began as an open source project, but has now matured enough to commercialize as a software-as-a-service product, says Torres, who serves as MindsDB's CEO. That transition has been a bit serendipitous as last fall's release of OpenAI's Chat-GPT has caused a massive surge in interest from not only investors, but everyday consumers in AI and machine-learning. Torres says the transition to commercializing MindDB's software really kicked into gear earlier this year after the startup got investor interest from Benchmark general partner Chetan Puttagunta. At the time the startup had around 15 customers paying for the company's software, but since then, that number has exploded to 82 paying clients. MindsDB initially had a goal to reach 200 SaaS customers by the end of 2024, but the company will likely reach that mark by the end of July or early August, Torres said. The massive customer growth has given the company a bit of catching up to do with some of the features it had initially had a two-year horizon to build. "So there will be a lot of fires that we have to be putting down in the next three months in terms of engineering," Torres said. "Right now, level of stress is 120%, but it's because of a good reason." MindsDB's revenue has grown 150% every month since March and is on pace to double that by July, according to the company. The company currently has 25 employees and is opening an office in San Francisco, but is also exploring building an engineering hub in Europe. MindsDB pitch deck