London-based OctaiPipe has successfully raised £3 million in pre-Series A funding, accompanied by a £500,000 grant from Innovate UK. The funding round, spearheaded by SuperSeed and featuring participation from Forward Partners, D2, Atlas Ventures, Martlet Capital, Gelecek Etki VC, and Deeptech Labs, marks a significant milestone for the end-to-end Edge AI platform designed for industrial IoT applications.

OctaiPipe, led by CEO Eric Topham, was launched in 2022, providing data scientists and AI engineers in Critical Infrastructure with a reliable end-to-end Federated Learning Operations (FL-Ops) platform. This platform facilitates the seamless deployment and automation of AI to the Edge, orchestrating distributed machine learning across scalable networks of intelligent IoT devices.

The company plans to utilize the newly acquired funds to further enhance its proprietary Federated Learning technology. The focus is on scaling the availability of the OctaiPipe platform for industries heavily dependent on Internet of Things (IoT), including Energy, Utilities, Telecoms, Manufacturing, and connected device Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs).

A unique aspect of OctaiPipe’s approach lies in its decentralization of AI training through Federated Learning. This method eliminates the need for data exchange between IoT devices and Cloud servers, thereby optimizing performance, ensuring system resilience, fortifying data security, and significantly reducing Cloud data costs.

In a recent conversation with Eric Topham, he explained the importance of Federated Learning in the context of IoT. Traditional edge computing often struggles with the high sampling frequency of automation systems, resulting in large volumes of heterogeneous data. OctaiPipe’s Federated Learning tackles this challenge by enabling local training of AI models at the Edge, maximizing performance and minimizing latency.

Arnaud Lagarde, recently appointed as Chief Revenue Officer, will play a crucial role in OctaiPipe’s commercial development. His experience as the former Vice President of Sales at Humanising Autonomy, specializing in Automotive, Autonomous Vehicles, and smart city solutions, positions him well for leading OctaiPipe’s growth in these sectors.

With over 20 customers and device OEMs already deploying the OctaiPipe platform, the company is making strides in ensuring the security and efficiency of critical data in sectors such as Energy, Utilities, Telecoms, and Security. The platform is available as a Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) on Microsoft Azure, AWS, or Private Cloud.

In conclusion, the £3.5 million funding injection is expected to propel OctaiPipe’s mission of making critical infrastructure smarter, more sustainable, and secure. The company’s commitment to advancing its technology aligns with the growing demand for trustworthy AI solutions in sectors vital to our daily lives.