LatticeFlow, a deep tech spin-off from ETH Zurich and creator of the world’s first platform for robust and reliable AI models, will be expanding to Sofia. Initially, there will be 5 strategic engineering hires, but there are already plans for rapid growth of the local team with the next funding rounds. So, in the next few years, LatticeFlow may employ up to 50 people in Bulgaria.
The company was founded in 2020 by leading, Bulgaria-born, AI researchers and deep-tech entrepreneurs. These include Prof. Martin Vechev and Dr. Petar Tsankov who previously co-founded and exited several successful startups – e.g. ChainSecurity and DeepCode.
Back in January 2021, LatticeFlow closed a $2.8М seed round to enable teams to deliver robust AI models, while avoiding costly unexpected failures in production.
Since then, its platform has been adopted by AI teams at Siemens, Swiss Federal Railways, Univrses, Intenseye, as well as governments, including the US Department of Defense and Germany’s Federal Bureau of Information Security. Based on the impact and strong early traction of the platform, it was recognized as a TOP 3 Swiss AI startup of 2021, also winning a US Army Global AI Award.
“We successfully built a first usable version of our platform and validated its benefits on real-world datasets and models, ranging from the medical, industry 4.0, and security industries. For example, the AI team of a leading cancer diagnostics client used our platform to create a state-of-the-art model in a few days, whereas before our engagement, they were unable to solve the problem for months, even with the help of all available existing tools. The end result here is important as the model is used to make predictions on millions of cancer patients per year. Since raising our seed round, it was impressive to see the massive benefits our automated AI platform can bring across the entire ML development pipeline,” shares Dr. Tsankov for The Recursive.
On a more global scale, the market has matured significantly over the past year, leading to substantial commercial interest in LatticeFlow’s platform.
LatticeFlow in Sofia
To accelerate product development and address the needs of this fast-growing market, LatticeFlow will be expanding its team to Sofia. The local team will work closely with Zurich-based AI researchers and engineers to accelerate platform delivery to global markets.
As explained by the company, many engineering aspects that involve turning a “cool” deep tech AI product into an easy-to-use and widely applicable ML platform will be based in Sofia. This includes work on product design and user experience, as well as front- and back-end development, ensuring the product is quick and easy to install, simple to use, and scales to large and complex datasets and models.
The first hire in Sofia is Ivaylo Toskov, a top MSc graduate from ETH Zurich and former software engineer at Facebook and Leanplum. “LatticeFlow ticks all the boxes – a top team that is the world leader in robust and reliable AI, strong product vision with an incredible opportunity for impact. In Sofia, we will focus on accelerating the growth of the LatticeFlow platform and make it an amazing experience for ML teams worldwide,” he explains.
“We are super excited to expand to Sofia, a focal point of top engineering talent with incredible hunger to work on next-gen deep tech products. This expansion is a terrific opportunity to strengthen existing ties and contribute to the local ecosystem, while enabling faster team growth over the years,” adds Dr. Tsankov, Co-founder and CEO of LatticeFlow.
