• Fastino raised $17.5M led by Khosla Ventures, bringing their total funding to $25M.
  • Its task-specific AI models are trained on gaming GPUs under $100K, offering 99x faster inference than typical LLMs.
  • The funding will expand Fastino’s research team and accelerate deployment of its enterprise-focused TLMs.

Palo Alto-based Fastino has secured $17.5 million in seed funding led by Khosla Ventures, bringing its total funding to nearly $25 million.

The startup, founded by AI researchers from Google DeepMind, Stanford, Carnegie Mellon, and Apple Intelligence, is pioneering a new approach in enterprise AI: building small, task-specific language models (TLMs) that can be trained on low-end gaming GPUs costing less than $100,000 in total.

Unlike tech giants that tout trillion-parameter models requiring vast GPU clusters, Fastino’s TLMs are intentionally compact and focused, delivering 99 times faster inference than traditional large language models.

“Our models are faster, more accurate, and cost a fraction to train while outperforming flagship models on specific tasks,” says Ash Lewis, Fastino’s CEO and co-founder.

Each model is purpose-built for a specific enterprise task-such as redacting sensitive data or summarising documents-enabling high accuracy, rapid response times (often in milliseconds), and significant cost savings.

Lewis says Fastino’s models outperform flagship models on targeted tasks, and their compact size allows for responses in a single token, boosting speed and efficiency.

The company’s API, now available with a free tier, lets developers access models tailored for summarisation, function calling, and more.

The round saw participation from Insight Partners, Valor Equity Partners, Dropbox Ventures, Docker’s former CEO Scott Johnston, and Weights & Biases co-founders.

Fastino plans to use the new capital to expand its research team and further refine its TLMs, targeting enterprise customers seeking efficient, scalable AI solutions.

While the enterprise AI field is crowded, early backing from Khosla Ventures-OpenAI’s first investor, signals strong confidence in Fastino’s contrarian approach to building smaller, more efficient AI models for business.

Edited by Annette George