Baseten nabs $20M to make it easier to build machine learning-based applications – TechCrunch

As the tech world inches a closer to the idea of artificial general intelligence, we're seeing another interesting theme emerging in the ongoing democratization of AI: a wave of startups building tech to make AI technologies more accessible overall by a wider range of users and organizations. Today, one of these, Baseten -- which is building tech to make it easier to incorporate machine learning into a business' operations, production and processes without a need for specialized engineering knowledge -- is announcing $20 million in funding and the official launch of its tools. These include a client API and a library of pre-trained models to deploy models built in TensorFlow, PyTorch or scikit-learn; the ability to build APIs to power your own applications; and the ability the create custom UIs for your applications based on drag-and-drop components. The company has been operating in a closed, private beta for about a year and has amassed an interesting group of customers so far, including both Stanford and the University of Sydney, Cockroach Labs and Patreon, among others, who use it to, for example, help organizations with automated abuse detection (through content moderation) and fraud prevention. The $20 million is being discussed publicly for the first time now to coincide with the commercial launch, and it's in two tranches, with equally notable names among those backers.