Announcing: Vera’s $2.7M Pre-Seed Funding!
When Justin and I first began our work in AI, we were astounded by its potential to transform the world. Back then, AI seemed like magic to me, doing things I didn’t think technology would ever be able to do. Of course, AI is not magic, it’s math. I learned this lesson when my team was responsible for building and labeling datasets that would one day become models, while Justin learned it as a Marine officer, doing math on a whiteboard before GPUs were fit for the task. For both of us, it was a front-row seat for all the crazy, unpredictable things that could go wrong in AI without good trust and safety practices in place.
A few years ago, companies around the world loudly proclaimed their “AI Principles”, assuring the public that they would only release models that did more good than harm. Today, it’s undeniable that AI is useful, and everyone can tell that its unique challenges require guardrails. In a post-GPT world, it’s clear that the time has come to move beyond AI principles into practice, where new, surprising properties arise each and every day.
Our team has witnessed, firsthand, the many ways AI can help society, and just as many ways it can be abused. We believe in the power of AI to benefit the world, but we would be naive, after all we’ve seen, to think that this will happen without great care and prudence, which is why Vera exists today.
That’s why the team at Vera are thrilled to announce the closing of our $2.7M pre-seed round of funding, led by Differential Venture Partners. We’ve been hard at work building, working alongside a fantastic group of clients and investors including Betaworks, Everywhere VC, Essence VC, SaaS Ventures, Greycroft, and ATP Ventures who all participated in the round.
This round of funding gives us what we need to scale our team and product, and begin the onboarding process for a growing waitlist of customers who are eager to get started on their [safe and reliable] Generative AI strategy. We’re tackling world-changing problems, and we hope you’ll join us in our mission to fix AI so it works for everyone (we’re hiring!).
Thank you to everyone who has believed in us all along our journey; we are grateful for your support and can’t wait to enter this exciting new phase!