Openlayer is a company that is leveraging its machine learning evaluation platform to revolutionize the machine learning and AI industry. Co-founders Rishab Ramanathan, Vikas Nair, and Gabriel Bayomi met while working at Apple and have since developed a platform that helps teams identify and fix machine-learning model failures before they are released into production.
The core product at Openlayer is a validation and testing platform that helps testing teams spot, diagnose, and give solutions to model failures before deployment. Openlayer allows firms to guarantee model performance by confirming the integrity of training, detection of differences between training, evaluation, and production data, making sure that the models reach their desired benchmarks and ensure fairness across data populations. Other features include building synthetic data to test and validate models in edges cases, following up on model versions and data, and making secure model behavior.
Openlayer recently raised $4.8 million in seed funding to support its growth and expand the platform’s functionalities. Lead investor was Quiet Capital, with additional contributions from Y Combinator, Picus Capital, Hack VC, Liquid2 Ventures, Mantis VC, Jonathan Swanson, Mike Krieger, Max Mullen, Guillermo Rauch, Gokul Rajaram, Immad Akhund, Oliver Cameron, Yuri Sagalov, Rodrigo Schmidt, and John Kim.
The company founders have set the goal of becoming the go-to platform for implementing guardrails for Large Language Models (LLMs) and handling mistakes in machine learning models for businesses. Openlayer is differentiating itself from other competitors in the market by focusing on evaluation even before a model is used in production and also stressing on responsible AI principles.
Rishab Ramanathan, Vikas Nair, and Gabriel Bayomi have expressed their favourite memories while working at OpenLayer as seeing the eureka moment when a user identifies hidden issues they had not previously considered. This is a powerful reminder of how Openlayer is helping businesses by highlighting unseen issues that could potentially undo a machine learning project.
In terms of challenges faced in building the company, the founders remarked on the difficulty of differentiating their message and product in the MLOps and Generative AI field. However, by focusing on responsible AI and implementation of guardrails, Openlayer has been able to observe success. With the AI software market expected to reach a total addressable market of $100 billion, OpenLayer is in a prime position to make a huge impact.
