Co-founders behind Reface and Prisma join hands to improve on-device model inference with Mirai | TechCrunch
Summary
Mirai, founded by the creators of Reface and Prisma, raises $10 million to enhance on-device AI model inference for smartphones and laptops, aiming for better performance and cost efficiency.
Why It Matters
As AI increasingly shifts towards on-device processing, Mirai's innovations could significantly reduce reliance on cloud computing, addressing cost and efficiency challenges in AI applications. This shift is crucial for developers seeking to optimize user experiences on consumer devices.
Key Takeaways
- Mirai aims to improve on-device AI model performance, reducing reliance on cloud computing.
- The startup's inference engine can enhance model generation speed by up to 37%.
- Developers can integrate Mirai's SDK with minimal code, streamlining app development.
- Mirai plans to expand its capabilities to Android and support vision modalities in the future.
- The shift to on-device AI is driven by the need for cost optimization in AI workloads.
Much of the conversation around AI today is focused on building cloud capacity and massive data centers to run models. Companies like Apple and Qualcomm are in the early stages of making on-device AI more useful. Amid all that, the 14-person technical team of London-based Mirai is working to improve how models run on phones and laptops. Mirai, which is backed by a $10 million seed round led by Uncork Capital, was founded by Dima Shvets and Alexey Moiseenkov last year. Both founders have experience in building scalable consumer apps. Shevts co-founded face-swapping app Reface, which was backed by a16z. Shevts later also became a scout for the venture firm. Moiseenkov was CEO and co-founder of the last decade’s viral AI filters app, Prisma. As consumer developers, both had been thinking about AI and machine learning on devices even before generative AI became popular, Shvets said. “When we met together in London, we started to chat about technology, and we realized that within the hype of gen AI and more AI adoption, everybody speaks about cloud, about servers, about AGI coming. But the missing piece is on-device [AI] for consumer hardware,” he told TechCrunch. Shevts and Moiseenkov wanted to use AI to create a pipeline that would allow them to enable complex tasks on the phone, which led them to start Mirai. When they asked others who developed consumer apps, they heard that many wanted better cost optimization and margin per token usage, too. Co-founders Alexey Moiseenkov ...
