Arcee AI

Arcee AI provides a developer platform to pre-train, align, and continuously adapt domain-specific small language models (SLMs).

Arcee AI has made training and deploying SLMs into a straightforward process using two techniques they have developed, Model Merging and Spectrum. Their technology offers vast improvements on performance at a staggering level of efficiency, in a secure end-to-end platform where the customer maintains full ownership of their models.

Arcee AI's Model Merging approach allows customers to train an open source LLM on their data, then blend or “merge” that model with another open source LLM. The merged model has the brains of both input LLMs, including the domain-specific customer data, but the size and inference cost of just one input model. The merge doesn’t require any additional training, which means no GPU usage. Yet the performance of the merged model is superior to that of the two input models. Model Merge is truly a technology where 1+1 equals 3.

The other approach Arcee has developed is called Spectrum, which allows for efficient training of LLMs by targeting specific layer modules that are useful, and freezing the rest. Spectrum optimizes training by 42% and addresses problems of LLMs “forgetting” previous knowledge, with no hit to performance.

The Small Language Models (SLMs) resulting from these training methods greatly outperform closed source models in the enterprise. One financial services customer saw a 23% boost in benchmarks and a 96% reduction in costs. Another insurance customer boosted performance by 83% and cut costs by 89%.

Arcee AI has also developed a SaaS interface, Arcee Coud, which makes Model Merging and Spectrum SLM training available with just a few clicks. This means even less technical users can build and deploy SLMs, supporting our conviction that specialized software will win in AI.

CEO Mark McQuade and CRO Brian Benedict were both early commercial hires at Hugging Face and have brought with them a deep understanding of the state of AI research and the importance of developing solutions that are production-ready for the enterprise. Their third Co-Founder, CTO Jacob Solawetz, comes from YC company Roboflow (where he also worked with Mark), which has been working on computer vision problems, a subset of AI that also requires custom models for maximum performance.

We are proud to partner with Arcee AI as they work to increase the utility, accessibility and performance of generative AI, so that businesses of all sizes can better serve their customers and achieve their goals.