Funding Secured: Cerebrium Announces $8.5M Expansion for Global Serverless AI Infrastructure, Originating from Africa
Cape Town-Based AI Startup Cerebrium Secures $8.5 Million in Seed Funding
Cerebrium, a serverless AI infrastructure platform, has raised $8.5 million in seed funding, marking a significant milestone in its growth. Led by Google's AI-centric venture firm, Gradient Ventures, the round also saw participation from Y Combinator, Authentic Ventures, and strategic angels.
Founded by Michael Louis and Jonathan Irwin in 2021, Cerebrium offers a scalable, high-performance serverless GPU infrastructure. The platform caters to developers, addressing challenges in AI development such as high cloud costs, fragmented tooling, and long development cycles.
The funding will be utilised to scale Cerebrium's engineering and product teams, enrich platform capabilities, and drive market entry efforts, particularly in the U.S. Over the next few months, Cerebrium plans to expand its offerings in live streaming, real-time avatar features, and robust enterprise APIs.
Cerebrium's success underscores the growing global recognition of African AI startups building enterprise-grade, developer-focused infrastructure solutions. The startup's client roster includes enterprise players like Tavus and Deepgram.
While the startup faces competition from well-funded startups like StackAI and Artisan, Cerebrium differentiates itself with its extensive GPU variety, strong support for real-time AI workloads, and advanced features such as multi-region deployment, auto-scaling, and integrated observability tools.
The involvement of Gradient Ventures and Y Combinator indicates strong ties to major AI and startup ecosystems. The platform is actively used by innovative companies, suggesting ecosystem integration with leading AI application builders.
In summary, Cerebrium is a leading, specialized serverless AI infrastructure provider focusing on scalability, performance, and cost efficiency for developers and enterprises building advanced AI applications. The startup's rapid progress underscores the rising capacity of South African tech startups to deliver AI infrastructure solutions on a global scale.
| Aspect | Details | |-----------------|---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | Growth | $8.5M seed funding led by Gradient in 2025 to scale platform and enterprise support; growing adoption | | Partnerships| Investors: Gradient Ventures (Google), Y Combinator, Authentic Ventures; Customers include Tavus, Deepgram, Vapi | | Competition | Competes with Fal AI (model APIs), Koyeb (general serverless platform); distinguished by wide GPU support, real-time, and scalable AI specialty |
The funding secured by Cerebrium will be used to invest in scaling its engineering and product teams, as well as to enhance the platform's capabilities and drive market entry efforts, especially in data-and-cloud-computing-based technologies like real-time avatar features and robust enterprise APIs. With this seed funding, the startup will also leverage artificial-intelligence technologies to improve its infrastructure and maintain its competitive edge over rivals like StackAI and Artisan.
