January 22 (Rositsa Ilieva of BTA) - LatticeFlow, a startup creating tools to help AI teams build AI models that are safe, reliable and trustworthy had raised 2.8 million US dollars in funding, one of the co-founders, Martin Vechev, told BTA. The money was attracted in a seed funding round led by Swiss deep-tech fund btov and Global Founders Capital, Europe's biggest hi-tech fund.

LatticeFlow is a spin-off of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich) and was co-founded by Pavol Bilelik, Andreas Krause and Bulgarians Martin Vechev (pictured second right) and Petar Tsankov (left).

Vechev said they are very happy with this initial investment, from top European investors. "This will allow us to focus on our product for several years and solve the core problems and make impact. After that we expect another, larger, series A round for delivering our product worldwide," he said.

He added that the safety of AI is a very critical and important topic for society and the expectations are that progress on this dimension generates interest.

The general idea behind LatticeFlow is to change the way the next generation of AI systems are built. It says that if people are to use AI in their businesses, at doctor's offices, on roads, or in their homes, companies and users need AI systems they can trust.

According to Vechev, trustworthy AI means that "we can mathematically ensure that an AI system does what we expect it to do, and behaves accordingly".

The most challenging aspect in his area is combining research and ideas from different areas of computing, that on the surface look different but are actually connected. For instance, methods such as machine learning and symbolic reasoning, he said.

Vechev is a Professor at ETH Zurich. He holds a PhD from the University of Cambridge and was a research staff member at the IBM T.J. Watson Research Center. Previously, Vechev co-founded two ETH spin-offs which were acquired by PwC and Snyk.

Tsankov holds a PhD from ETH Zurich. Before LatticeFlow, he co-founded ChainSecurity which was acquired by PwC. He graduated from Georgia Tech with two research awards and was awarded by the President of Bulgaria for his achievements in computer science.

Vechev told BTA that all aspects are important in his field of work. "One should have a good idea, but also carry through and deliver results as there are many good ideas that never succeed. This requires hard work and focus over a long period of time," he said. RI/LN//