The Startup Making AI More Accessible Raises $17.5 Million

Fastino, a promising AI startup based in Palo Alto, has just closed a $17.5 million funding round, bringing its total raised to nearly $25 million. Led by CEO and co-founder Ash Lewis, the company is gaining attention for its unique approach to AI: training lightweight, specialized models for specific business tasks. A New Take on AI Development Instead of building massive general-purpose models, Fastino focuses on creating smaller models tailored to individual use cases—such as data anonymization or document summarization. These models are not only more efficient but also extremely fast, delivering results in milliseconds and often using just a single token to respond. What sets Fastino apart is its cost-effective training process. The company claims it can fully train its models using consumer-grade GPUs and under $100,000—making high-performance AI more accessible than ever. Backed by Major Investors The latest funding round was led by Khosla Ventures, one of the first VC firms to invest in OpenAI. Previous investors include M12, Microsoft’s venture fund, and Insight Partners, both of which participated in a $7 million pre-seed round. Democratizing Artificial Intelligence Fastino’s mission is clear: to make AI tools faster, cheaper, and more customizable for businesses of all sizes. By leveraging smaller, focused models and affordable hardware, the startup is paving the way for a new era of AI adoption—where powerful tools aren't just for tech giants, but for everyone.