Seldon: Open Source Platform for Machine Learning

Seldon is an open-source platform upon which data scientists and developers can leverage the core building blocks of machine learning. Seldon's open-source machine learning deployment platform helps data science teams solve problems faster and more effectively. It's designed to streamline the data science workflow, with audit trails, advanced experiments, continuous integration and deployment, rolling updates, scaling, model explanations, and more.

Currently only a few percent of machine learning models move from R&D to production, but over 50% of businesses now want to build their own models in house. The highly complex, distributed machine learning application is comprised of existing open-source software (which the Seldon team contributes to), as well as proprietary software that was developed in-house. Thanks to solutions like containers and orchestors, the company is able to run and ship their distributed applications much more quickly and easily to their customer base.

Predicting the Future with Seldon Platform

Seldon's mission is to help people predict and shape the future with machine learning. They're firm believers that machine learning is the enabling technology driving AI renaissance, as it helps people solve problems of all shapes and sizes. Seldon's CEO Alex Housley has been building technology start-ups since 2003.

To shape and validate Seldon's roadmap, they've been listening to their community of data scientists and customers about their priorities and the challenges that organisations face. One of their biggest decisions was whether to focus on some of the vertical use cases or continue to build a foundational technology that operates on a generalised and horizontal basis. Most machine learning startups focus on serving a specific use case and it's a validated playbook that investors understand and buy into. According to UK AI market research published by David Kelnar from MMC Ventures, 84% of startups focus on AI for a function or sector. Companies can build a defensible moat by combining deep domain expertise and the data network effect that improves the service itself as more data is fed into it — in terms of accuracy and performance of the model.

Believe in the Company, Hold the Award

In 2016, Seldon was part of the world's #1 fintech accelerator, Barclays Techstars. This experience helped the company to gain vast amounts of product feedback from a broad range of stakeholders and sign customers in the banking and financial services space. It also helped to gain deeper understanding of the machine learning use cases that large enterprises are prioritising and challenges they face when embarking on an AI project.

It quickly became clear to the Seldon team that they had to build a new enterprise product. Solving deployment means creating an entirely new category in machine learning that sits on the intersection of data science and ops. Seldon Deploy is a new machine learning deployment platform that they have been creating based on hundreds of discussions with clients, prospects and mentors, and feedback from the community. It provides a stunning new UI that helps data science teams manage deployment workflows, providing new capabilities around infrastructure, collaboration and compliance.

The Visionary Leader

Alex Housley is technical founder and builder of mobile, data and machine learning start-ups since 2003. He is an applied machine learning expert with BSC in Business & Computing and currently an advisor to the UK government on AI.

Alex is a serial entrepreneur on a mission to establish the new open standard for predictive AI, to make the world a more personalised, productive and fun place. He is the co-creator of the Genome Laser, which sequenced the inventors of the laser and high-speed genome sequencing and blasted their DNA into space with an enormous laser.

Managing Tough Times

When the company released their open-source machine learning platform in 2015, machine learning was a niche topic in the business world. But leveraging what is broadly described as AI is now at the top of the strategic agenda for organisations of all sizes across industries.

Happy Clients of Seldon

AI is about using machines to solve new problems. It's about automating and augmenting our decision making. It's about making the world a better place. Embracing AI is one of the biggest opportunities for the UK economy at this time.

Machine learning is everywhere in our lives. It recommends products online, removes spam from your inbox, and decides which of your friends' status updates you should read.

Computers have already acquired superhuman abilities across hundreds of new and much focused domains.

But machine learning can also help them tackle some of the world's biggest problems like

• Drug discovery and image diagnostics in healthcare.
• Predicting crop yields in agriculture.
• Increasing power efficiency – from data centres to the national grid and soon smart grids.

Here are a few words from some of the happy customers of Seldon.

"You need platforms like Seldon plus their ability to develop sophisticated algorithms to make better predictions. It's reassuring having Seldon on our side during our personalisation journey to accelerate our projects and make better decisions." Michael Harte, Barclays Group Head of Innovation

"Ara.cat has benefited from the Seldon service since 2013. Seldon helped us develop customized algorithms. Our CTR and user engagement increased significantly since working with Seldon. Seldon's team are client focused with advanced expertise in solving complex prediction & recommendation problems." Marc Camprodon CTO Ara.cat  

"I've found Seldon to be organised, reliable, patient & innovative. During our first workshops, they helped me understand how machine learning can solve my business problems & improve my services. They clearly understand what it takes to deliver a successful machine learning project" Alexander Pluke CEO The Plastic Economy