Flapping Airplanes raises $1 billion to build more efficient AI models

Flapping Airplanes has raised a $1 billion Series A at a reported $6 billion valuation. Index Ventures and Lux Capital co-led the round, with earlier backers Sequoia, GV and Kleiner Perkins also participating. Index partner Mark Xu is joining the board. The financing follows a $180 million seed round at a $1.5 billion valuation.

The lab is developing AI models designed to require substantially less training data and computing power. Its founders describe a GPU “megakernel” framework that combines workloads such as training and inference into a single program. The company has no product on sale, and its performance claims remain the founders’ own.

Founded by Aidan Smith, Asher Spector and Ben Spector, the company operates in person in San Francisco. Smith previously worked at Neuralink, while the Spectors studied at Stanford. Nvidia is also among the lab’s investors. Revenue and plans for using the funding have not been disclosed, and no commercialization timeline has been provided. The reported valuation remains unconfirmed.