Databricks competitor Chalk raises $50 million series A

Chalk, an artificial intelligence infrastructure startup, announced Wednesday that it raised $50 million in Series A funding. The company is now valued at $500 million. Felicis was the leader of this round.

Chalk, a San Francisco-based company, helps companies quickly convert their proprietary data to AI and machine-learning models. This allows them to make current decisions using AI. Chalk is used by fintech companies like MoneyLion to make instant decisions for fraud detection, loan approvals and solar company Sunrun to determine where solar panels should be placed on roofs.

Marc Freed Finnegan, CEO of Chalk, said, "The old-school model was for companies to process data as a batch, but more and more, they want to make real-time decisions." Elliot Marx, Andy Moreland and others founded the company. Chalk is a data analytics platform that competes with Databricks, Snowflake and other platforms for building and governing data and AI applications. But, Freed-Finnegan says, Chalk differs from these platforms by offering real-time AI data processing.

These companies have profited from the AI boom, selling more tools to help clients create and deploy AI apps using the increasing volume of data that they store with their company. Databricks received a $10 billion funding round, a record in the history of venture capital funding. (Reporting and editing by Stephen Coates in San Francisco, Anna Tong)

(source: Reuters)