Arcee is a secure, enterprise-focused platform for building GenAI
Summary
While working at Hugging Face, engineers Mark McQuade and Brian Benedict ran into challenges helping enterprise customers adopt GenAI. Some companies didnt want to use closed-source AI APIs due to the perceived lack of transparency but also resisted open source models over security concerns.We came to realize that the primary challenge was overcoming the trust deficit in existing generative AI systems, McQuade told TechCrunch in an email interview, particularly regarding performance and security.McQuade, whod also done stints at Rackspace and computer vision startup Roboflow, was inspired to search elsewhere for solutions. After failing to find any, he along with Roboflows head of machine learning Jacob Salowetz and Benedict developed a platform from the ground up to let organizations build and train GenAI models within a secure compute environment.Launched last February as Arcee, the platform maintained by its Miami-based namesake startup has attracted $5.5 million in venture funding to date from investors including Long Journey Ventures, Flybridge, Centre Street Partners, Wndrco, 35V, AIN Ventures and Hugging Face CEO and co-founder Cl\xe9ment Delangue.Arcee revolutionizes AI for highly regulated industries such as legal, healthcare, insurance and financial services, McQuade said. Its a legitimate concern.In a recent Boston Consulting Group survey of over 1,400 C-suite executives, only about half of the respondents said that they expect GenAI to bring substantial productivity gains to the workforces that they oversee. Were committed to building value for our investors, partners and customers, and believe that the current focus should remain on our technological and market advancements rather than on specific financial metrics.Its not naive optimism on McQuades part necessarily at least concerning the investment piece.