Generative artificial intelligence startup Liquid AI has announced the closure of a $250m early-stage funding round.

The round was led by chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), which is also a strategic partner to the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based company.

This investment aims to bolster Liquid AI’s development of Liquid Foundation Models (LFMs), which are lightweight, general purpose AI models for enterprise use.

The company’s LFMs are positioned as an alternative to traditional cloud-based AI models offered by companies such as OpenAI, AWS, and Google Cloud, reported Reuters.

The partnership with AMD will enable Liquid AI to optimise these LFMs with graphic, central, and neural processing units. This collaboration is expected to enhance the performance and scalability of LFMs.

The company has already released text-based models and announced multimodal LFMs, showcasing their potential in real-world applications.

Liquid AI plans to use the Series A funding to scale its compute infrastructure and pace up product readiness on the edge and on-premise.

The company intends to integrate its AI products into mission-critical workflows across various sectors, including consumer electronics, telecommunication, financial services, e-commerce, and biotechnology.

The funding will also support the company’s commitment to democratising access to AI by scaling the advantages of LFMs across more model sizes and data modalities, and they have also invited interested parties to join its team as it continues to innovate in the AI sector.

Liquid AI chief executive officer Ramin Hasani said: “We are proud that our new industry-leading partners trust our mission; together, we plan to unlock sovereign AI experiences for businesses and users.”

AMD Corporate Development senior vice president and chief strategy officer Mathew Hein said: “Liquid AI’s unique approach to developing efficient AI models will push the boundaries of AI, making it far more accessible.”

“We are thrilled to collaborate with Liquid AI to train and deploy their AI models on AMD Instinct GPUs and support their growth through this latest funding round.”

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