Tenyks lands $3.4m to invent the way humanity interacts with A.I and protect the world from the Terminator

• Tenyks helps machine learning engineers fix critical mistakes in and remove bias from computer vision data and algorithms
• A Y Combinator graduate startup and University of Cambridge spinout, Tenyks saves companies time and money when developing accurate, safe, reliable A.I.
• Round led by Speedinvest and firstminute capital

8 March 2022; Cambridge, UK

Tenyks, a University of Cambridge spin-out focused on helping machine learning engineers build better, safer A.I., has raised a $3.4m seed round.

The startup’s platform helps machine learning engineers working with computer vision data build more reliable software, faster. Like a ‘doctor for A.I.’, it helps developers understand what’s wrong with their algorithms, resolve issues, remove bias, boost model performance, and enhance data quality.

Tenyks was cofounded by Botty Dimanov, Dmitry Kazhdan, and Maleakhi Wijaya. They’ve developed technology that provides insights for computer vision applications at an unprecedented granularity.  Botty came up with a patent-pending invention that laid the foundations for Tenyks’ technology while working on his PhD. Dmitry and Maleakhi then spent 2.5 years fleshing out the practical implications of the research as part of their PhD and Masters work and establishing the engineering scaffolding that could produce a reliable product. 

Having gone through Y Combinator’s summer 2021 programme, Tenyks has now come out of stealth and is working with five pilot users. For example, insights from Tenyks help engineers accelerate their development lifecycle, so they spend less time onboarding new users, reducing customer acquisition costs and boosting the accuracy of A.I. 

“In one case, a machine learning engineer used Tenyks to identify the root causes of 80% of their algorithm’s failures. These findings helped them deliver higher quality results to their customers because of the significantly improved system performance. Moreover, future new deployments can be onboarded in half the time because the engineers can now focus their efforts on alleviating the key bottlenecks,” says Tenyks’ CEO, Botty.

Becoming the best part of a machine learning engineer’s day

The new funding will be used to double the startup’s software engineering team, bringing the company’s headcount to 12. “We are building a culture which makes it contagious to pour your heart and soul into building the product that can become the data explorer for machine learning. But what is different about Tenyks is that we are not just about achieving. We are about happily achieving. We find joy in everything we do, including and especially when it is most challenging, because that’s when we grow the most. We even measure how many times we laughed during the week,” says Tenyks’ Founding Engineer, Maleakhi.

Tenyks aims to turn the most boring part of a machine learning engineer’s job—manually sifting through data to improve the success rate of their A.I.— into the pinnacle of their day. “Engineers get frustrated wandering in the dark, trying to figure out if the change they made will improve performance, and not having the insights needed to know what to do next. Tenyks removes this stress, making the process a breeze,” says Botty.

The round was co-led by Speedinvest and firstminute capital, with participation from  LAUNCHub Ventures; Y Combinator; the University of Cambridge; Creators Funds; Remus Capital; CSVE Ventures; RKKVC; Black Mountain Ventures, and a dozen angels, including the co-founders of Privitar (market leader in data privacy and data governance), Pete Hutton who developed products worth over $500m as a former President of Product Groups at Arm, and John Taysom who led the first investment in Yahoo in 1995.

Inventing the way humanity interacts with A.I.

Tenyks wants to invent the way humanity interacts with A.I. 

“Every time technology pushes the boundaries of the impossible, a category-defining product emerges to open the door for widespread adoption,” says Botty. “Computers had graphical user interfaces and the internet had search engines. A.I. will have collaborative platforms that allow us to program and interact with data and unlock the full potential of artificial intelligence.”

Tenyks will develop an ecosystem of products designed to make the job of a machine learning engineer easier, while reducing the learning curve necessary for developing, understanding, monitoring, and auditing A.I. “Gradually, in the same way coding is now a required subject in schools, A.I. programming will be a commonplace skill empowered by Tenyks products.” says Tenyks’ CTO, Dmitry.

“A.I. development is changing from a model-centric approach to a data-centric approach,” says Rick Hao, Partner at Speedinvest. “Based on many years of research at Cambridge University, Tenyks has developed a data-centric platform that can help machine learning engineers to have more granular insights on data, assessing the reliability across different relevant data sets and then finally improve the model and results. We were impressed by the deep A.I. expertise of the team and the growing market demand and very excited to support the company to move to the next stage.”

“The Tenyks team have a highly complementary mix of hustle, charisma and ambition, combined with serious technical capabilities,” says Camilla Mazzolini, Principal at firstminute capital. “We are excited to back them in building the leading software platform that monitors and validates A.I.-enabled computer vision systems.”

“The vision, the experience and the culture of the team, makes investing in Tenyks a very easy and exciting decision. It is time to make the AI ‘black boxes’ a thing of the past, by providing transparency to their customers and their creators.” comments Stan Sirakov, General Partner at LAUNCHub Ventures

About Tenyks: 

Tenyks is a YC’S21 University of Cambridge spin-out inventing the way humanity interacts with A.I. to protect and delight. To protect the world from the misuse of A.I., but also to ensure that AI is developed with passion, excitement, and joy! The company is building an MLOps monitoring and validation platform that helps A.I. developers working with computer vision data to build more reliable software faster. Specifically, helping machine learning developers understand what’s wrong with their software and fix it. Imagine all the tools you use to develop software that need to be reimagined and created for the A.I. world.

About Speedinvest: Speedinvest is a leading early-stage venture capital firm with more than €600M AuM and 40 investors based in Berlin, London, Munich, Paris, Vienna and San Francisco. Our dedicated sector focused teams are the first to fund Europe’s most innovative technology startups and our in-house operational experts are on-hand to offer founders ongoing support with growth, HR, US market expansion, and more. Wefox, Bitpanda, TIER

Mobility, GoStudent, Curve, CoachHub, Schüttflix, TourRadar, Adverity, and Twaice are among our portfolio of

250+ companies. Learn more at speedinvest.com.

About firstminute capital: firstminute capital is a $300m AUM seed fund backed by 100+ unicorn founders and star CEOs. They partner with founders at pre-seed and seed stage globally. Their team comprises 20 operators and investors from the likes of Index Ventures, DeepMind, Monzo, McKinsey, Goldman Sachs and more – sitting across London and Berlin.  Launched in 2017, the firstminute portfolio today comprises 90+ companies re-shaping industries through technology and brilliant product.

About LAUNCHub Ventures: LAUNCHub Ventures is a leading early-stage venture capital fund, investing in startups in Seed and Series A stages. We partner with ambitious founders from Central and Southeastern Europe and the diaspora of that region in big technology hubs, and support them to reach their full potential.