https://techcrunch.com/2022/06/16/grid-ai-rebrands-as-lightning-ai-raises-40m-to-build-ai-dev-tools/

Lightning AI, the startup behind the open source PyTorch Lightning framework, today announced that it raised $40 million in a Series B round led by Coatue with participation from Index Ventures, Bain, the Chainsmokers’ Mantis VC, and First Minute Capital. CEO William Falcon told TechCrunch that the new money will be used to expand Lightning AI’s 60-person team while supporting the community around PyTorch Lightening development.

Lightning AI, formerly Grid.ai, is the culmination of work that began in 2018 at the New York University Computational Intelligence, Learning, Vision, and Robotics (NYU CILVR) Lab and Facebook AI Research (now Meta AI Research). After Falcon started developing PyTorch Lightning as an undergrad at Columbia in 2015, he founded Lightning AI in 2019 with Luis Capelo, the former head of data products at Forbes. While working on his Ph.D. at NYU and Facebook AI Research, Falcon open-sourced PyTorch Lightning, and — according to him — the project quickly gained traction.