From right to left: Root (ML), Stitch (Data Science), Selchie (Computer Vision), Choi (rrrrrrrrrrrr), Toko (HR), Nova (CCO – Chief Cuddling Officer) and the rest of Kwak’s human team | Source: Qwak
The technological stack of the ML world today is very complex and dispersed. The data science teams in companies often depend on a third party such as the devops and data engineers to build and transfer to the production environment a simple model – which means a lot of time and a lot of money that goes to waste. Fortunately, an Israeli startup wants to make the lives of ML people easier.
Shorten a process of months to a few hours
The Israeli startup company Qwak has developed a fully managed, end-to-end ML platform that aims to optimize the organization’s entire ML process. “We make it possible to reduce the dependence between the various entities and the headache of integrating multiple suppliers. In short, we allow the organization to focus on what is most important – building ML models that generate business value,” says the company’s CEO and one of the founders – Alon Lev, in a conversation with Gigtime.
The product they developed allows the data science teams to be independent from the stage of building the models, comparing performance and analyzing changes, to the ability to transfer models to the production environment and monitor the model, all without changing the way the teams work. “The product is a fully managed product, that is, data science teams do not need to install packages or manage infrastructure, and Kwak’s product manages the infrastructure fully.
Lev says that the main advantage of the product is the ability of data science teams to be more effective, and to significantly shorten the development time of the models: “Instead of a process that takes many months, shorten it to a few hours, and allow the teams faster iterations and quality testing of the models and their behavior.”
He founded Qwak in 2021 with Yuval Fernbach (CTO), who technologically led AWS’s machine learning platform in Europe and the former CTO of MAMAM; Lior Penso (COO), who served in business development and sales positions at Ironsource and AWS; Vern Romano, (VP R&D) who founded and led Wix’s ML platform. Last year, the company reported raising capital totaling $15 million.
Today (Wednesday) the company reports the completion of a new fundraising round in the amount of 12 million dollars. The round was led by Bessemer Venture Partners, with participation from existing investors Leaders Fund, StageOne Ventures and Amiti. The new round brings the total investment in the company since its inception to $27 million. Today the company employs about 30 people, most of them in its development center in Israel and some in New York.
“Actually, we were not actively looking for additional investment, but our relationship with Bessemer and Ariel Shterman began when we founded the company. Although Bessemer did not invest in the early rounds, they provided us with support and guidance throughout the process, including getting to know some of our customers. At one of our friendly coffee meetings I updated Ariel on our progress, and he was very impressed with what we were able to achieve and the vision and business progress. This conversation and the early acquaintance created a situation where it was clear to us that we wanted to find a way to work together, even if at that moment we really weren’t thinking of recruiting, so we decided to do an interim round that actually doubled the The value of the company. We weren’t really looking for investors, but when a welcome collaboration comes along, we don’t say no,” Lev tells us about the completion of the new round.