Liquid AI Secures $250 Million in AMD-Led Funding for Innovative AI Model Development

Liquid AI Raises USD 250 Million to Build Worm-Inspired AI Models: Report

Liquid AI is focused on AI scalability and efficiency for enterprises, including industries like biotechnology and telecommunications. Liquid AI, an MIT spin-off artificial intelligence startup and foundation model company, has reportedly closed a USD 250 million early-stage funding round, led by chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), which is also its strategic partner, at a USD 2.3 billion valuation. Liquid AI develops Liquid Foundation Models (LFMs), which it claims are smaller, more efficient AI models for enterprise use, compared to traditional cloud-based offerings from OpenAI, AWS and Google Cloud. The startup is reportedly designing AI systems inspired by the structure of the tiny brain of a worm. Also Read: Vodafone and AMD Collaborate to Develop Next-Gen Energy-Efficient AI-Enabled Base Stations The startup previously raised USD 46.6 million in seed funding. The Series A round is being led by Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), with participation from OSS Capital, Duke Capital Partners and PagsGroup, among other investors, according to a Bloomberg report. The strategic partnership with AMD will help the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based startup to optimise LFMs with AMD's graphic, central and neural processing units, Reuters reported. "We have been proving the technology in the last year, making sure that an alternative structure to transformers can be scaled," said Ramin Hasani, co-founder and CEO, according to Bloomberg. "This funding will help get us to the next level." "We just fundamentally believe that there is a lot of innovation continuing in AI and driving models forward," Mathew Hein, senior vice president and chief strategy officer of corporate development at AMD, reportedly said. "All the enterprise customers we talked to are getting excited about the potential these models can unlock," Hasani further added, according to the report. Traditionally, developers have used neural networks, inspired by the human brain, to enable AI systems to learn through trial and error. Liquid AI, however, is adopting a unique approach. The startup is reportedly creating a novel technology called liquid foundation models, which leverage mathematical techniques derived from studying the structure of a worm's brain. "By focusing on an organism -- specifically, a small nematode worm called Caenorhabditis elegans that's just 1 millimetre long -- with far fewer neurons than the human brain, Liquid AI said it's able to build an AI system that is more flexible. Its systems also require less data and computing power than the conventional transformer-based models that underpin chatbots and other popular AI tools," the company reportedly said. Also Read: AMD to Build Hardware-Agnostic Software Environment for AI Development: Report In an October announcement, Liquid AI said it is developing a new generation of generative AI models that can achieve state-of-the-art performance at every scale while maintaining a significantly smaller memory footprint both during training and inference beyond what was possible before. With reduced memory usage and near-constant inference speeds, LFMs are highly efficient for both training and deployment. Their on-device computing capabilities minimise reliance on cloud services, reducing costs and energy consumption, said Liquid AI. "Our Liquid Foundation Models elevates the scaling laws for general-purpose AI systems at every scale for any data modality. Our first series of language LFMs achieve state-of-the-art performance at every scale, while maintaining a small on-device memory footprint," said Ramin Hasani, CEO and co-founder of Liquid AI, in October as the company unveiled its first products built on Liquid Foundation Models (LFMs) at an MIT event on Wednesday, October 23, 2024. Liquid AI's LFMs are designed to handle complex tasks, including multi-step reasoning and long-context recall while being computationally efficient. According to the company, the first series of language LFMs, available in 1B, 3B, and 40B configurations, deliver robust performance and broad knowledge capacity across various domains, enabling them to solve tasks such as question answering, translation, composition, and summarisation, among other skills. Also Read: Vapi Raises USD 20 Million to Bring AI Voice Agents to Enterprises The funding will also help Liquid AI scale infrastructure and develop tailored LFMs for industries such as consumer electronics, biotechnology, telecommunications, financial services and e-commerce.

Liquid AI raises $250M led by AMD to build a new type of generative AI model - SiliconANGLE

Liquid AI raises $250M led by AMD to build a new type of generative AI model Liquid AI Inc., an artificial intelligence startup and MIT spinoff developing generative AI models based on a fundamentally different architecture than transformer-based AI, today announced it has raised $250 million in an early-stage funding round led by Advanced Micro Devices Inc. OSS Capital, Duke Capital Partners and PagsGroup also participated in the Series A round. The company previously raised $46.6 million in seed funding in 2023. The Boston-based startup's new models are called "Liquid Foundation Models," or LFMs, which the company says can deliver performance comparable to, or superior to, traditional large language models on the market today. The company's models are based on a concept of "liquid neural networks," a classification of AI networking that differs from Generative Pre-Trained Transformer-based models, or GPTs, that underpin today's popular chatbots such as OpenAI's ChatGPT and Google LLC's Gemini. "At Liquid, our mission is to build the most capable and efficient AI systems at every scale," said Chief Executive Ramin Hasani. "Since our inception, we have demonstrated the scalability of our technology by releasing text-based models, unveiling multimodal LFMs, and collaborating with key partners to showcase real-world impact." Liquid AI offers three model sizes: LFM-1B, a dense 1.3 billion-parameter model for on-device, such as mobile phones; LFM-3B, a 3.1 billion=parameter model optimized for edge deployments; and LFM-40B Mixture of Experts, designed to tackle complex tasks. The company said LFMs have a reduced memory footprint compared with GPT architectures that is even more substantial for lengthy inputs - for example, when processing extremely long documents or video. Liquid said the LFM-3.1B model used significantly less memory than other small models when deployed than models such as Google LLC's Gemma 2 2B-it or Meta Platform Inc.'s Llama 3.2 3B. Along with the funding, the company has joined in a strategic partnership with AMD, strengthening Liquid's ability to optimize its foundation models with the chipmaker's graphics processing units, central processing units and neural processing units. Liquid AI added that it will use the additional funding to scale infrastructure to support the development of future LFMs for diverse model sizes and data types. It will also develop of tailored LFM research to optimize the models for specific industries such as consumer electronics, biotechnology, telecommunications, financial services and e-commerce.

Liquid AI Raises $250 Million in Round Led by AMD

Liquid AI, which is developing a new approach to building generative artificial intelligence models, announced Friday that it had raised $250 million in Series A funding, led by chipmaker AMD. The round values the startup at $2.3 billion, Bloomberg reported. That's smaller than the $300 million, at a $3.7 billion valuation, a Liquid leader had previously told investors it had been seeking.

Liquid AI closes $250 million early-stage funding round led by AMD

(Reuters) - Generative artificial intelligence startup Liquid AI said on Friday that it had closed a $250 million early-stage funding round led by chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices, which is also its strategic partner. Consumer GenAI, which captured global attention in 2022 with the launch of OpenAI's ChatGPT, is at the center of the rapidly growing AI sector. This year also saw investors funnelling billions of dollars into GenAI startups. Liquid AI develops Liquid Foundation Models (LFMs), which it claims are smaller, more efficient AI models for enterprise use, compared to traditional cloud-based offerings from OpenAI, AWS and Google Cloud. The strategic partnership with AMD will help the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based startup to optimize LFMs with AMD's graphic, central and neural processing units. The funding will also help Liquid AI scale infrastructure and develop tailored LFMs for industries such as consumer electronics, biotechnology, telecommunications, financial services and e-commerce. (Reporting by Rishi Kant in Bengaluru; Editing by Alan Barona)

Liquid AI closes $250 mln early-stage funding round led by AMD

Dec 13 (Reuters) - Generative artificial intelligence startup Liquid AI said on Friday that it had closed a $250 million early-stage funding round led by chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices (AMD.O), opens new tab, which is also its strategic partner. Consumer GenAI, which captured global attention in 2022 with the launch of OpenAI's ChatGPT, is at the center of the rapidly growing AI sector. This year also saw investors funnelling billions of dollars into GenAI startups. Liquid AI develops Liquid Foundation Models (LFMs), which it claims are smaller, more efficient AI models for enterprise use, compared to traditional cloud-based offerings from OpenAI, AWS and Google Cloud. The strategic partnership with AMD will help the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based startup to optimize LFMs with AMD's graphic, central and neural processing units. The funding will also help Liquid AI scale infrastructure and develop tailored LFMs for industries such as consumer electronics, biotechnology, telecommunications, financial services and e-commerce. Reporting by Rishi Kant in Bengaluru; Editing by Alan Barona Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab Suggested Topics:Technology

Liquid AI just raised $250M to develop a more efficient type of AI model | TechCrunch

Liquid AI, an AI startup co-founded by robotics luminary Daniela Rus, has raised $250 million in a Series A led by AMD. Per Bloomberg, the round values Liquid AI at over $2 billion. Liquid AI aims to build general-purpose AI systems powered by a relatively new type of AI model called a liquid neural network. Liquid neural networks consist of "neurons" governed by equations that predict each individual neuron's behavior over time. The "liquid" bit in the term "liquid neural networks" refers to the architecture's flexibility; inspired by the "brains" of roundworms, not only are liquid neural networks much smaller than traditional AI models, but they require far less computing power to run. Liquid AI aims to develop tailored liquid neural networks for applications like e-commerce, consumer electronics, and biotech. As part of AMD's investment, Liquid AI says it'll work with the chipmaker to optimize its models for AMD's GPUs, CPUs, and AI accelerators.

Liquid Set to Raise $250 Million to Build AI Inspired by Tiny Worm Brains

Liquid AI, a startup designing artificial intelligence systems inspired by the structure of the tiny brain of a worm, is set to raise $250 million in funding at a $2.3 billion valuation. The Series A round is being led by Advanced Micro Devices Inc., with participation from OSS Capital, Duke Capital Partners and PagsGroup, among other investors. The startup previously raised $46.6 million in seed funding, according to the company. Traditionally, developers have relied on neural networks loosely modeled off of the human brain to help AI systems learn through trial and error. Liquid AI is taking a different approach. Founded in 2023 by a group of AI researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the startup is building a novel technology called liquid foundation models that instead uses mathematical techniques discovered by studying the architecture of a worm's brain. By focusing on an organism -- specifically, a small nematode worm called Caenorhabditis elegans that's just 1 millimeter long -- with far fewer neurons than the human brain, Liquid AI said it's able to build an AI system that is more flexible. Its systems also require less data and computing power than the conventional transformer-based models that underpin chatbots and other popular AI tools, the company said. "We have been proving the technology in the last year, making sure that an alternative structure to transformers can be scaled," said Ramin Hasani, co-founder and chief executive officer. "This funding will help get us to the next level." Two years after ChatGPT's release kicked off a frenzy around generative AI, there is a growing debate about whether top developers are hitting a wall in building more advanced artificial intelligence systems that justify the tremendous cost. A key part of Liquid AI's pitch is effectively that its technology can do more with less. The startup said its models are better suited to run on devices, reducing the need for costly data centers. Liquid also claims a text-based version of its AI system outperformed some leading alternatives of similar size on various benchmarks.