Irish start-up Zerve has secured $3.8 million in pre-seed funding to bolster its research and development capabilities, with plans to expand its staff and double its current team of 12 over the next year. Founded in 2021 by Phily Hayes, Jason Hillary, and Greg Michaelson, the company has developed a cloud-based platform that facilitates collaboration among data science and AI development teams.
Zerve’s platform aims to allow data scientists to work together simultaneously, promoting exploratory data analysis and the development of production-quality code. The company’s co-founder, Mr. Hayes, described their architectural vision as one that promotes multiplayer collaboration in data science, similar to how Figma allows designers to collaborate in real-time.
The funding from the pre-seed round provides Zerve with the opportunity to realize and capitalize on this vision. Elkstone Ventures led the round, with contributions from angel investors including Algolia CTO Sean Mullaney and former DataRobot EVP of engineering Rob Hickey. Niall McEvoy, partner at Elkstone Ventures, praised Zerve’s ambition to bridge the gap between data science and AI development, emphasizing the potential for its technology to break down silos and harness the power of AI and data science.
In addition to securing funding, Zerve has also been selected as one of the 10 European startups for the Intel Ignite Accelerator program, which is tailored for deep-tech companies. Mr. Hayes identified fragmented tools available to data scientists for sharing code and results with colleagues as a productivity hindrance