SAN FRANCISCO– Continual, a next-generation AI platform for the modern data stack, today announces $14.5 million in Series A funding and general availability of its cloud platform. The round was led by Innovation Endeavors, a firm that invests in visionary founders, transformational technology and emergent ecosystems for a new world. The round was joined by Amplify Partners, Illuminate Ventures, Inspired Capital, Data Community Fund, Activation, New Normal, GTMfund, and angels Tomer Shiran, the founder of Dremio, and Tristan Handy, the founder of dbt Labs.
Businesses want to leverage AI to remain competitive but struggle with operational complexity of deploying AI at scale. Continual launched at the end of 2021 to simplify operational AI on the modern data stack and works with midmarket and enterprise companies to accelerate the deployment of AI across sales, marketing, operations, and product use cases. Powered by the industry’s first declarative AI layer and native integration with modern cloud data platforms like Snowflake, Databricks, and BigQuery, Continual enables analytics and AI teams to deploy machine learning solutions without complex engineering or operational burden.
“Operational AI is drowning in complexity which limits its potential to drive business impact. We’re reimagining operational AI for the modern data stack because we’ve learned that companies want to simplify their data infrastructure and empower all users in their organization to deliver business value from AI,” said Tristan Zajonc, CEO and cofounder of Continual. “Our mission is to make operational AI simple by allowing all team members, from analytics engineers to data scientists, to build continually-improving predictive models that never stop learning from their data.”
“Over the last few years, we’ve seen predictive analytics and AI become the lifeblood of today’s leading enterprises. But most companies still struggle to infuse AI broadly in their organizations. We believe Continual’s approach to building directly on an organization’s existing cloud data platforms and empowering all user types, not just machine learning engineers, is the right recipe to unlock the potential of AI for every organization. We’re excited to partner with Continual to bring AI to the modern data stack and unite analytics and AI teams everywhere,” said Harpinder (Harpi) Singh, Partner at Innovation Endeavors.
With the new capital, Continual will double its team by the end of 2022 to support its customers and expand functionality for more advanced use cases and users. In addition to announcing general availability of its cloud platform, Continual is releasing a private preview of model extensibility functionality which gives advanced users the ability to extend Continual’s MLOps engine with custom capabilities. Combined with its existing declarative machine learning capabilities, Continual now unites data science and analytics teams on a shared platform for operational AI.
“As a retailer, accurately forecasting future demand and inventory translates to better product availability and experience for our customers and improved operational efficiency,” said Maxime Lagresle, Head of Data at Veronica Beard. “Continual helps us simplify our data infrastructure, unify our analytics and machine learning workflows, and accelerate our path to building a data-driven business. We’re excited by Continual’s extensibility features that allow users with different skill sets to work together on a shared platform to solve use cases faster.”
