Inference startup Sail Research Inc. has raised $80 million in a Series A round, valuing the company at $450 million. Led by Sequoia, this funding comes on the heels of an earlier seed round backed by Kleiner Perkins and notable investors like Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan and Alphabet Chair John Hennessy.
Sail Research offers a cloud platform enabling developers to utilize long-horizon AI agents that tackle tasks spanning weeks, promising significant cost efficiencies over competitors. The platform operates via customized open-source inference engines, optimizing hardware usage and performance.
AI agents deployed within Linux-based virtual machines, called Sailboxes, allow for tailored configurations and can link multiple units into a single ensemble for complex task completion, enhancing scalability and reliability. An internal benchmark revealed a record score of 90.72% for its AI agents at a tenth of the cost of rivals.
The funds raised will be directed towards improving Sail Research's inference infrastructure for better operational efficiency.