As companies worldwide strive to adopt Large Language Models (LLMs), FriendliAI, a South Korean AI infrastructure startup, is garnering significant attention. FriendliAI operates a B2B AI platform designed to solve the cost and speed challenges companies face when applying generative AI models to their services. By optimizing numerous open-source AI models for immediate business use, they allow developers and enterprise customers to download high-performance AI models via API or run them on the cloud without complex procedures.

The Challenges of Operating Large AI Models

The generative AI market has grown explosively since the advent of ChatGPT. While everyone wants to create services using AI models, the realistic barriers to entry are incredibly high. The biggest hurdles are “astronomical GPU costs” and “slow response speeds.”

Running high-performance AI models requires expensive infrastructure, and when user traffic spikes, “latency” issues occur, significantly slowing down answer generation. This degrades the user experience and causes operating costs to skyrocket. Consequently, many companies hesitate to adopt AI despite having innovative ideas, purely due to the difficulties of infrastructure construction.

FriendliAI Eliminates the Fear of Cost and Speed

FriendliAI has solved these problems through its proprietary “Friendli Engine.” By using this engine, companies can run AI models in the most efficient way possible without needing to develop separate infrastructure optimization technologies.

FriendliAI’s solution dramatically increases inference speed compared to traditional methods while simultaneously reducing costs. Companies can now provide AI services in a stable environment without worrying about wasting expensive GPU resources.

From Lab Technology to Global Standard Solution

Founded by a team led by Professor Jeon Byeong-gon of Seoul National University, FriendliAI commercialized “Iteration Batching” technology, a concept they proposed for the first time globally.

This is an innovative technology that minimizes idle GPU resources by inserting new requests into the AI’s sentence generation process. In the past, companies had to blindly increase GPU servers to support AI services; now, through FriendliAI’s software optimization, they can handle much more traffic with the same resources. This technical prowess is playing a decisive role in establishing generative AI as an essential tool in industrial sites, moving beyond the research lab.

A B2B AI Serving Platform for Enterprises

Established in 2021, FriendliAI rapidly supports the latest open-source models favored by enterprises, such as Llama and Mixtral. The usage process is incredibly simple. Enterprise customers can access the FriendliAI cloud, select a desired model, and generate a dedicated endpoint with just a few clicks, drastically reducing complex coding and server setup processes.

Furthermore, companies can easily upload custom models (fine-tuned models) trained on their own data to run on the optimized engine. A dashboard allows for real-time monitoring of usage and costs, enabling transparent budget management for enterprises.

A Bridge Between Model Providers and Service Developers

FriendliAI connects research organizations that create AI models with service companies that build apps using them. By maximizing the computational efficiency of AI models, they help the models perform at 100% capacity.

This allows companies to escape the complex homework of infrastructure management and focus on creating the core value of their services. FriendliAI is also performing the role of essential AI middleware for global companies by entering global cloud marketplaces such as Microsoft Azure.

Targeting the Global Market with Overwhelming Inference Speed

FriendliAI is strengthening its global competitiveness with its recent “Friendli Dedicated Endpoint” service. Using this service allows for text generation at speeds far superior to competitor solutions.

FriendliAI’s ultra-low latency technology is particularly essential for services where real-time conversation is critical, such as chatbots and virtual assistants. Thanks to a structure where efficiency increases as user numbers grow, the client base is expanding every month. Based on this unrivaled technical capability, FriendliAI is growing into a unicorn company in the AI infrastructure sector.