Vellum, a NYC-based enterprise development platform, has raised $20 million in a Series A funding round. This round was led by Leaders Fund with participation from Socii Capital and returning investors Y Combinator, Rebel Fund, Pioneer Fund and Eastlink Capital. The company plans to use the funds to continue building its platform for AI development and globally expanding its go-to-market presence.
Co-founder and CEO Akash Sharma states that Vellum is working towards building an AI development standard that can help accelerate AI adoption globally. “Generative AI has captured the imagination of nearly every industry, but turning that potential into reliable, production-ready systems remains a massive challenge,” Sharma said. “For many teams, it still feels like guesswork. Vellum changes that. We provide the infrastructure that brings rigor, predictability and repeatability to AI development, so teams can build with confidence and scale with clarity.”
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Vellum states it is an enterprise development platform for building, evaluating, and deploying mission-critical AI products. It claims to be the most comprehensive one on the market, and helps cross functional teams work together through the entire AI development lifecycle.
Vellum also claims that it believes in “test driven development,” and that every element in the platform is built around this principle. The platform enables AI workflow definition, which allows engineers and non-technical experts to collaborate side by side. It also enforces end-to-end evaluation which catches failures and edge cases, and ensures deployments are safe. Vellum also enables live monitoring and continuous improvement.
“The rise of LLMs and AI has changed how software is built, but the need for reliability and structure remains the same,” said Gideon Hayden, co-founder and managing partner at Leaders Fund. “Most large organizations developing AI applications are stuck in the prototype phase, struggling to make AI systems reliable, repeatable and ready for production. Vellum’s test-driven development platform meets the moment.
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The team has quickly earned the trust of leading enterprise customers by solving the core challenges that slow AI development: maintaining reliability, accelerating iteration and enabling collaboration. Vellum is setting a new standard for how AI gets built, and we’re proud to support that vision.”
A number of companies use Vellum to power their AI initiatives. Some of them include Drata, Swisscom, Redfin and Headspace. “Vellum has been a force multiplier for our AI efforts; their test-driven approach helps us catch regressions early and iterate quickly,” said Lior Solomon, VP of Engineering at Drata, a leading security and compliance automation provider. “In a space where accuracy and security assurance are critical, Vellum gives us the infrastructure to move fast without compromising performance and deliver AI-powered features that our customers can trust.”