By Grace Stanley
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.
In his research, Abdelfattah focuses on designing machine-learning-centric computer systems. Mako represents a practical extension of that work.
“Even though Mako did not spin out of my research group at Cornell, there is a lot of synergy in the end goal of both endeavors: to improve AI efficiency and enable scaling beyond current models,” said Abdelfattah, who is also affiliated with Cornell Engineering. “Mako gave me an opportunity to solve more imminent engineering challenges related to deploying AI models on GPUs today, while my research at Cornell takes a longer view of this challenge by imagining new hardware and algorithms altogether.”
The company is based at The Bridge, Cornell Tech’s new workspace in the Tata Innovation Center that brings together early-stage startups, established tech companies, and academic researchers under one roof. Located on Roosevelt Island, The Bridge at Cornell Tech is designed to foster collaboration between industry and academia — creating a dynamic environment where ideas can move quickly from lab to market.
“The location really helps me optimize my time between my two roles as faculty and founder,” said Abdelfattah. “Entrepreneurship is encouraged here, even for junior faculty, and being in New York City makes it easy to connect with customers, investors, and top talent, including our own Ph.D. and M.Eng. graduates.”
“We chose The Bridge because it’s the perfect fit for how we work,” said Mako’s co-founder, Waleed Atallah. “I wanted to be surrounded by other startups. The energy here is unmatched compared to isolated office spaces. And of course, the view is unbeatable.”
Grace Stanley is the staff writer-editor for Cornell Tech.
