In a bid to strengthen its research and development capabilities, Irish start-up Zerve has secured $3.8 million in pre-seed funding. Founded in 2021 by Phily Hayes, Jason Hillary, and Greg Michaelson, the company is headquartered in Tipperary and has developed a cloud-based platform that facilitates collaboration among data science and AI development teams.

The goal of the platform is to allow data scientists to work together simultaneously. According to Zerve’s co-founder, Mr. Hayes, the company’s architectural vision is one that promotes exploratory data analysis and the development of production-quality code. He believes that data science should transition from a solo pursuit to a multiplayer endeavor, much like what Figma did for design by allowing designers to collaborate in real-time.

The funding from the pre-seed round provides Zerve with the opportunity to realize and capitalize on its vision. Elkstone Ventures led the round, with contributions from angel investors including Algolia CTO Sean Mullaney and former DataRobot EVP of engineering Rob Hickey. Niall McEvoy, partner at Elkstone Ventures, praised Zerve’s ambition to bridge the gap between data science and AI development, emphasizing the potential for its technology to break down silos and harness the power of AI and data science.

Zerve has also been selected as one of the 10 European start-ups for the Intel Ignite Accelerator program, which is tailored for deep-tech companies. The fragmented nature of tools available to data scientists for sharing code and results with colleagues has been identified as a productivity hindrance by Mr. Hayes. He hinted at the need for a unified platform like Zerve’s to address this issue, and the company is positioned to do exactly that.