Mirai, a new company founded by the creators of the popular apps Reface and Prisma, has announced a $10 million seed funding round. The primary goal is to develop solutions to improve the inference of artificial intelligence models directly on user devices, such as smartphones and laptops.

On-Device Inference: A Growing Trend

On-device inference, which involves running AI models locally without the need for a constant connection to the cloud, is becoming increasingly relevant. This approach offers significant advantages in terms of privacy, latency, and bandwidth consumption. For those evaluating on-premise deployments, there are trade-offs that AI-RADAR analyzes in detail at /llm-onpremise.

Market Implications

This funding highlights the growing importance of AI inference at the local level. Optimizing model execution directly on devices opens up new opportunities for applications that require fast responses and protection of sensitive data.