Expanse, an AI infrastructure company, has announced a $5.3 million seed funding round to expand its engineering team, accelerate product development and reach wider industry adoption.
The round was led by Crane Venture Partners, alongside PXN Ventures, AIP Seed, and angel investors including former DeepMind researchers.
The Edinburgh University spin-out develops software that predicts AI workload requirements and helps organisations reduce wasted computing capacity.
Ismaeel Bashir, one of four co-founders and CEO of Expanse, said: “Engineers shouldn’t have to predict exactly how much compute their code will need before they press run. The machine should carry the uncertainty, not the person.”
According to industry estimates cited by Expanse, approximately 30% of cloud expenditure is lost through over-allocation.
The company also pointed to research from Microsoft Research indicating that GPU utilisation sits at around 50% across many internal deep learning workloads.
The other founders are Nikodem Bieniek, Eren Mendi and Yafet Melake. They previously built and operated large-scale computing infrastructure across quantitative finance and national supercomputing facilities.
Andy Barrow, managing director of PXN Ventures, said the growing adoption of AI had intensified the focus on the infrastructure needed to support it.
“The widespread adoption of AI by businesses and everyday users has led to an unprecedented focus on the infrastructure required to service this technology and many of the challenges that engineers face.
“As Expanse has identified, one of those challenges is optimisation and helping businesses to make better use of their compute resource, which can lower running costs and increase scalability. PXN is proud to be backing Ismaeel and the team, who are tackling this head on.”
Quorum Cyber deal
Edinburgh-based Quorum Cyber is expected to acquire Zurich-headquartered Ontinue.
The proposed transaction would unite two Microsoft-focused companies with complementary strengths in managed detection and response, proactive risk reduction, incident response, professional services and security operations, according to a statement.
Founded in Edinburgh in 2016, Quorum Cyber’s customer base is mostly based in the UK and North America.
The combined company is expected to deliver a full-lifecycle approach to cyber resilience, spanning artificial intelligence adoption, proactive security improvement and 24/7 threat detection.
The deal would also extend the combined company’s reach across North America, the UK and the central European region.
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