Sift Secures $42M Funding Round Led by StepStone to Enhance AI Observability for Physical Machines

Sift, a company specializing in the intelligence layer for mission-critical machines, has successfully completed a $42 million Series B financing round. StepStone led the investment, with participation from GV (Google Ventures), Riot Ventures, Fika Ventures, and CIV, bringing the total funding to $67 million. The funding will be used to expand Sift's engineering team, focusing on building the infrastructure layer for AI-controlled hardware systems across various sectors such as space, defense, manufacturing, and autonomy.

As artificial intelligence progresses from processing text to managing physical machines, a significant infrastructure gap has emerged, hindering AI's ability to effectively operate in the physical world. Sift aims to bridge this gap by automatically converting raw sensor data into structured, queryable data, enabling both engineers and AI systems to work with it. Co-founder and CEO Karthik Gollapudi, who previously worked at SpaceX, highlighted the lack of infrastructure for AI-controlled hardware, emphasizing Sift's role in enabling seamless interaction between AI and hardware. Sift's platform offers a comprehensive solution, serving as a single source of truth across various data types, enabling engineering teams to diagnose anomalies faster, validate designs against real-world performance, and maintain fleet-wide visibility from a unified platform.

The company's platform addresses the challenge of scaling, particularly in managing fleets of hundreds or thousands of machines, by providing fleet-wide observability, automated anomaly detection, and unified visibility across numerous systems. The funding will also facilitate the expansion of Sift's team, relocation to a larger headquarters, and the enhancement of its platform to support the growing number of organizations deploying AI-controlled hardware at scale. Sift has already garnered trust from notable organizations and enterprise defense programs, positioning itself as the system of record for companies involved in building the next generation of machines. The company's vision is to become the intelligence layer for the physical world, ensuring reliability across complex systems.