Mako, a startup co-founded by Cornell Tech assistant professor Mohamed Abdelfattah, has raised $8.5 million in seed funding to tackle one of artificial intelligence’s most pressing infrastructure challenges: optimizing the computing efficiency of graphics processing units, or GPUs.

The $8.5 million round was led by M13, with participation from Neo, Flybridge, and others. The company plans to use the funding to grow its engineering team and accelerate product development.

GPUs are powerful computer chips essential to powering AI. However, they are notoriously difficult to write efficient code for, often leading to wasted resources and high costs. Mako aims to change that by offering a suite of tools that streamline GPU deployment and make AI systems faster, more efficient, and less costly to operate. The company’s flagship product, MakoGenerate, helps teams run large-scale AI workloads with greater speed and reliability.

Read more on the Cornell Tech website.