Portugal and US-based startup Apres today announces an approx. €1.25 million seed round to bring its “explainable AI” solution to market. European early stage venture capitalists Faber and Adara co-led the round, with participation from Techstars and local angels.
Founded in 2018, Apres is entering a booming AI market, growing to $110B by 2024, saturated with promise, but littered with failure. Today, over 87% of the models developed will fail to make it into production. Even if they’re successful, they will have an 85% instance of error. Regardless of outcome, over 80% of AI budgets will be spent on data processing and reporting. Success is rare and the failures are destructive (see instances of Twitter, JP Morgan, Apple to mention just a few).
Apres was founded to unlock the promise of AI by radically improving accessibility. It has big plans, aiming to translate AI behaviour into a language everyone can understand, reduce error and eliminate bias by communicating model gaps to the right people at the right time, reduce spend by automating reporting, and make responsible AI the better business decision.
The Apres platform makes it simple to integrate the model users already have to deliver rich explanations and interpretations. Building beyond first-generation explainability, Apres contextualizes each slice of data and model decision relative to business goals. This creates a common language for non-technical and technical teams to communicate success and provide feedback that improves Apres interpretations and reporting. These results are then made available on-demand via a web application, flexible API, and integrations.
“The ability to explain AI based outputs is becoming a critical aspect of any AI system and it’s a field we have been following for some time,” said Carlos Silva, Partner at Faber. “In Apres we found not only a bleeding edge solution to this problem but also a particularly outstanding team that merges vision, domain expertise and ability to execute. We feel honored that they chose us to share their long-term mission with.”
“We are excited to partner with Apres to deliver their mission to make AI explainable and transparent,” said Ross Strachan, Principal at Adara. “Matt, Subbu and the Apres team have impressed us with their deep domain expertise and bold product vision and we look forward to supporting them as they embark on their growth journey.”
“Companies should not have to choose between AI performance and transparency,” said Matt Waite, CEO of Apres. “We’re thankful for our partnership with Faber and Adara, two deep-tech funds, who understand our vision for making responsible AI accessible to everybody.”
