Artificial intelligence (AI) startup Flapping Airplanes has raised $1 billion in a Series A funding round at a reported valuation of $6 billion, nine months after launching with $180 million in seed funding.
The round, announced on October 21, was co-led by Index Ventures and Lux Capital, according to the company. Existing investors GV, Sequoia and Kleiner Perkins also participated. Other investors include Valor, Atreides, A* and Nvidia.
The latest funding values the year-old company at four times its $1.5 billion valuation in January, when it secured backing from GV, Sequoia and Index.
Founded by Aidan Smith and brothers Asher and Ben Spector, the startup aims to develop ways to train large AI models using less data. Smith previously worked at brain implant company Neuralink, while Asher Spector holds a background in statistics at Stanford University. Ben Spector studied computer science at Stanford and founded Prod, a student-run startup accelerator.
The company is developing what its founders describe as a “megakernel framework”, designed to combine multiple computing tasks into a single programme running on a graphics processing unit (GPU). They say the system can handle AI model training, inference and video games, potentially allowing hardware to operate more efficiently.
In a recent post on X, the company said, “Our mission is to unlock new markets in Al, including robotics, scientific discovery, and more, by pioneering radical new techniques to improve efficiency. We imagine a world where models can be intelligent without ingesting half the internet.”