AI Infrastructure Startup Chalk Announces $50M Series A

Gunderson Dettmer represented client Chalk, an artificial intelligence infrastructure startup, in its $50 million Series A financing led by Felicis Ventures with participation from Triatomic Capital and continued support from General Catalyst, Unusual Ventures, and Xfund. Chalk enables companies to incorporate their proprietary data into AI and machine learning models, enabling swift, data-driven decision-making. The new funding will accelerate the development of a fully general compute framework, improving integration and usability to allow developers to easily build transformative, real-time AI applications.

In the announcement of the transaction, co-founder and CEO Marc Freed-Finnegan said, “AI compute is shifting rapidly from training to real-time inference, creating new demands for fresh data and complex computations at the exact moment decisions are made. Existing solutions have enabled large, complex training workflows and feature stores (low-latency caches of pre-processed data), but real-time inference remains underserved. Chalk uniquely addresses this critical gap by providing infrastructure designed explicitly for instantaneous, intelligent decisions. Our mission remains clear: to deliver intuitive, powerful data infrastructure that integrates seamlessly with developers' favorite tools.”

The Gunderson deal team was led by Andy Bradley and Jared Mayberry and included Jake Winton, Esalyna Liang, Julie Mahoney and Paroma Mallick.

Companies
Chalk
Felicis Ventures
Triatomic Capital
General Catalyst
Unusual Ventures
Xfund