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A very new company leveraging Web3 technology and way ahead of the curve. Most people are just getting their heads around Crypto and Blockchain while these guys are already building software for developers to create Web3 apps.

Spice AI is a startup technology company that assists developers to create intelligent apps that adapt and learn. The Seattle-based company was founded by Luke Kim and Phillip LeBlanc in June 2021. With a footprint in Australia, Asia, and other parts of the globe, the company is expanding and has a number of developer roles open.

Since inception, Spice AI has raised $14.5 million in funding. One of the founders, Luke Kim, was the co-creator and founding manager of Azure Incubation at Microsoft. At the time, he was head of the team that developed Dapr and other technologies. He spent fifteen years working on related projects before he created Spice AI.

Philip LeBlanc worked on distributed systems at Microsoft and GitHub before joining Spice AI alongside Kim. he has been building some of the world’s largest distributed systems for more than ten years.

Spice AI is creating a Web3 foundational platform for developers to use. To do this, they are building the infrastructure to create applications that are ML/AI-driven and can solve complex data problems in Web3. The platform will prevent developers from spending lots of money on building their own data engineering and infrastructure. The young company is also interested in providing real-time perspectives from time series data across chain power intelligent apps for various sectors and industries. This system will help in fraud detection, retailing, and security trading. The Spice.AI runtime runs as a microservice and is written in Python and Golang.

Investments

With more than 20 investors, Spice AI has raised over $14 million in over two rounds. The most recent funding round, led by Madrona Venture Group, was completed on the 7th of September 2022, where $13.5 million in funding was achieved. Elysium Venture Capital and TA Venture are two of their latest investors. The first seed, which saw thirteen investors participating, raised a total of $1.1 million in October 2021.

Funding rounds:

• Pre-Seed Round (14th of October 2021) — $1.1 million raised by 13 investors
• Seed Round (September 7, 2022) — $13.5 million raised by 16 investors

Investor’s profile

Spice AI has a total of 21 investors. Some of the notable names include Cardinia Ventures, Asymmetric, Protocol Labs, IEX Group, TA Ventures, Elysium Venture Capital, Madrona Venture Labs, Alumni Ventures, Blackbird Venture Capital and GitHub. Some of their individual investors and partners are Shane Mac, John McCann and Thomas Dohmke, who is the Chief product Officer at GitHub.

Madrona Venture Group

Founded in 1995 in Seattle, Washington in USA, Madrona Venture Group is a capitalist venture company that helps startup companies incubate their ideas. They invest in early to developmental stages. The American company has raised a total of $2.9 billion in 13 funds. Their most recent funding in September 2022 raised a total of $430 million. Madrona was the lead investor in the seed funding that raised $14 million for Spice AI in 2022.

Blackbird VC

The Australian capital venture group, Blackbird Venture Capitalist participated in the funding round for the Seattle technology company in 2022. The company was created in 2012 by Larry Marshal. Blackbird VC invests in hardware, technology, education, and other enterprising sectors in Australia and other places. Their investments cover seeds to accelerating stages. The company is headquartered in Sydney, Australia.

GitHub

Angel investor Nat Friedman, who is the CEO of GitHub, is one of the key investors at Spice AI. GitHub is a provider of code hosting services for developers to create open-source software and private projects in organizations. GitHub has raised a total of $350 million in funding since its inception. GitHub was acquired in June 2018 for a total of $7.5 billion in stock by Microsoft.

Elysium Venture Capital

Elysium VC is an investment management group with main focus on creating global opportunities in technology. The company was founded in 2017 in Palto Alto California, United States of America. Elysium invests in fintech, artificial intelligence, consumer tech, software and blockchain. They help these companies in developing their business ideas, recruiting and product marketing. The company is one of the latest investors of Spice AI. Elysium VC participated in the second funding round that saw the startup tech company raised $13.5 million.

Achievements

• Spice.XYZ has successfully created a platform that allows developers to access web3 data on all chains through SQL over high-performance Apache Arrow APIs. It has also eased blockchain application development.
• Spicerack allows developers to share their manifest with their reward functions. It allows other developers to access and reuse them for their use.

Board of directors

Spice AI currently has 6 top executives, including the two founders and four members of the Board.

• Luke Kim is the co-founder and Chief Executive Officer at Spice AI.
• Phillip LeBlanc is the founder and Chief Technical Officer at Spice AI
• Thomas Dohmke is the CEO and Chief Product Officer at GitHub. He has made three investments, one of them was in the Spice AI’s seed round in September 7, 2022.
• David Chen is the advisory partner at Spice AI and the Product Manager at Avatars (Meta).
• Tim Porter joined the team in September 2021 as one of the partners at Spice AI. He is the Managing Director at Madrona VC.
• Joe McCann is the advisory partner at Spice AI. He is the founder and Chief Executive Officer at Asymmetric. McCann has made 9 investments so far. His latest investment was at the Spice AI’s seed funding round in September 7, 2022.

Insights

Very impressive to see the amount raised by this company in just a year. With the global emphasis on blockchain, web3, and AI, I think there will be a lot more investors looking for companies like this in the coming year.

Will be keeping an eye on Spice AI. Noticed they have just a couple Youtube videos up from a year ago, but it looks like they are expanding their team and will be making more waves soon.