Inephany raises $2.2M to automate and optimise AI model training
Inephany, an AI optimisation startup, has announced the close of a $2.2M pre-seed funding round to accelerate development of its AI-powered optimisation platform, which promises to revolutionise how neural networks—including Large Language Models (LLMs)—are trained and fine-tuned. The round was led by Amadeus Capital Partners, with participation from specialist AI VC Sure Valley Ventures and Professor Steve Young, the acclaimed AI pioneer and serial entrepreneur, who joins Inephany as both an angel investor and company chair.
As generative AI continues its rapid ascent, the soaring compute and energy costs of training cutting-edge models have emerged as a major bottleneck. Training GPT-4 is estimated to have cost between $60 million and $100 million, with next-generation models edging towards the $1 billion mark according to industry leaders such as Anthropic. AI compute demands are now doubling roughly every six months—outpacing Moore’s Law and rendering traditional training and optimisation methods increasingly unsustainable.
Inephany addresses this challenge head-on with a novel AI-driven optimisation system that intelligently controls the training process in real-time. Compared to traditional “brute force” approaches that rely on exhaustive trial-and-error optimisations, Inephany’s technology dramatically improves sample efficiency, accelerates training, reduces overall development time, and enhances final model performance—all while slashing compute costs. This breakthrough holds the potential to unlock scalable, sustainable AI development that’s at least 10x more cost-effective.
While the company’s initial focus is on training-time optimisation for LLMs, its technology has broad applicability across the AI landscape—from Recurrent Neural Networks used in financial time-series forecasting, to Convolutional Neural Networks powering computer vision in autonomous systems. The company also has plans to expand its AI-powered optimisation approach to inference time compute. By slashing the cost and compute burden of training and deploying these models, the Inephany team aims to democratise access to advanced AI and accelerate innovation across industries.
Founded in July 2024 by Dr John Torr (formerly of Apple Siri’s machine learning team), Hami Bahraynian, and Maurice von Sturm (co-founders of conversational AI startup Wluper), Inephany brings together deep technical expertise in neural network optimisation. The funding will be used to grow the core engineering team, advance its optimisation platform, and onboard its first enterprise customers.
Professor Steve Young, renowned for his foundational contributions to speech recognition and dialogue systems—including key work behind Apple’s Siri—joins as chair to help guide the company’s next phase of growth.
John Torr, CEO at Inephany, said: “We are thrilled to be backed by such experienced investors, and having a seasoned entrepreneur and AI pioneer like Professor Steve Young as our chair is a true privilege. Current approaches to training LLMs and other neural networks are extremely wasteful across multiple dimensions. Our unique solution tackles this inefficiency head-on, with the potential to radically reduce both the cost and time required to train and optimise state-of-the-art models. As we prepare to deliver our first products later this year, we are incredibly excited to embark on the next chapter of our journey—and to help shape the ongoing AI revolution by transforming AI optimisation.”
Barry Downes, Managing Partner at Sure Valley Ventures, commented:“Inephany’s AI optimisation software is addressing critical inefficiencies in large-scale AI training, with huge potential to unlock scalable, cost-effective AI development. As a specialist AI VC, we were instantly impressed by the technical knowledge of Inephany’s founding team – John, Hami and Maurice – who have exceptional expertise in building scalable AI solutions. This is a hugely exciting AI innovation – operating at the cutting-edge of optimisation technology for neural networks – with immense growth and adoption potential.”
About Inephany
Inephany is a deep tech AI startup founded in July 2024 and based in London. We pioneer revolutionary foundation models designed to optimize the performance, efficiency, and adaptability of other AI systems. By rethinking how models learn and evolve, Inephany is enabling a new era of faster, smarter, greener, and more cost-effective AI training and deployment.
The Inephany team brings together world-class engineers, research scientists, and entrepreneurs, united by a shared vision to push the boundaries of AI through intelligent, system-level optimization.
About Sure Valley Ventures (SVV)
SVV is a specialist AI venture capital fund that since 2017, has invested in high potential AI software startups. The fund partners with early-stage businesses to develop breakthrough technologies, providing capital, technical expertise, and strategic support to accelerate their growth.
