We can’t think of a better way to kick off 2023 than to get our seed fundraise featured in TechCrunch, GeekWire, and Madrona.

We’re extremely thankful for your support, and we’ll keep working on making XetHub more awesome for you. Below is our official press release as published on Business Wire.

XetHub Emerges from Stealth with $7.5 million in Seed Financing for Collaboration and Development Platform for ML and AI Applications

XetHub launches to enable Remote ML Application Developers to Work Together on Data Centric Applications; Announces Public Availability

January 09, 2023 11:00AM Eastern Standard Time

SEATTLE--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Today XetHub announced seed financing of $7.5 million from Madrona. XetHub brings data and code together so that hybrid and remote teams can collaborate seamlessly in a git-enabled environment at scale and speed. Starting today, XetHub is publicly available and free to use at www.xethub.com.

XetHub also announced two ML and Git luminaries joined the company as advisors - Carlos Guestrin, Founder of Turi and Stanford Professor, and Shanku Niyogi, VP of Product at Databricks, previously SVP of Product at GitHub.

Intelligent applications – applications that depend on data and AI – are the present and future of software development. To build these applications, developers must work with large data sets comprised of structured, unstructured, images, text, video, proteins and more in combination with code. Developers are used to working in coding tools like GitHub which makes collaboration and source control an integrated part of the workflow. Data is not part of that workflow and is managed in tools that are less scalable and flexible and require developers to continually switch between tools. This bifurcated workflow slows down development and puts friction on the next generation of great apps and is quickly becoming untenable as datasets explode in size and the apps become even more tightly dependent on the data.

XetHub brings Git sensibility to working with data. The team, led by co-founder and CEO, Yucheng Low, has built these systems at scale within Apple. They recognized that the workflow for code would be powerful if only it worked with data. With XetHub, developers can now work with their data using the same conventions they have used for at least a decade with code in a git influenced environment. They can check data in and out, ensuring that data is not corrupted or changed inadvertently – while creating a clear governance record. They can seamlessly collaborate with each other regardless of location. XetHub works today with 1TB datasets with plans for 100TB in the near future. With XetHub developers have the tools to build intelligent applications quickly and easily.

“As applications, such as those used in bioscience and video games, depend on both larger and larger files and more of them, working with this data has become unmanageable with current tools. Downloading data is time-consuming, but is required to determine relevance,” says Yucheng. “Remote engineers need the same access to data and the collaboration tools as those on site, and that is what XetHub delivers.”

With XetHub, engineering teams can store data alongside code in the same Git repository, simplifying the AI/ML discovery, prototyping, development, and production process. Just as GitHub does for software, this makes it easier for engineers to see how data has changed and who changed it.

“Yucheng and the exceptional XetHub team have been innovating with machine learning for well over a decade, and then applying their skills at the most iconic consumer technology company – Apple. XetHub enables developers to work with large datasets, in collaboration with others, to build intelligent and generative applications,” commented Matt McIlwain, Managing Director, Madrona. “Developing and deploying these applications is constrained by legacy infrastructure and complex data workflows, and XetHub addresses these pain points from the developer point of view.”