Apres announces US$1.5M seed round

The US and Portugal-based Apres has announced a US$1.5M seed round to bring its accessible AI solution to the market.

European early stage venture capitalists Faber and Adara co-led the round, with participation from Techstars and local business angels.
The Apres platform removes bias and improves model performance in heavily regulated industries like finance and insurance.
Apres enters a booming AI market, estimated to grow to US$110Bn by 2024. However the market is saturated with promise but littered with failure. Today, over 87% of the models developed will fail to make it into production. Even if they are successful, they will have an 85% instance of error.
Regardless of outcome, over 80% of AI budgets will be spent on data processing and reporting. Success is rare and the failures common.
Apres was founded to unlock the promise of AI by radically improving accessibility. To ensure model success by translating AI behaviour into a language everyone can understand. To reduce error and eliminate bias by communicating model gaps to the right people, at the right time. To reduce spend by automating the reporting a team needs to trust its model. To make responsible AI the better business decision.
“The ability to explain AI based outputs is becoming a critical aspect of any AI system and it’s a field we have been following for some time,” says Carlos Silva, Partner at Faber. “In Apres we found not only a bleeding edge solution to this problem but also a particularly outstanding team that merges vision, domain expertise and ability to execute. We feel honoured that they chose us to share their long-term mission with.”
“We are excited to partner with Apres to deliver their mission to make AI explainable and transparent,” says Ross Strachan, Principal at Adara. “Matt, Subbu and the Apres team have impressed us with their deep domain expertise and bold product vision and we look forward to supporting them as they embark on their growth journey.”
“Companies should not have to choose between AI performance and transparency,” says Matt Waite, CEO of Apres. “We’re thankful for our partnership with Faber and Adara, two deep-tech funds, who understand our vision for making responsible AI accessible to everybody.”