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Neuro, a start-up founded by University of Bath graduates Paul Hetherington and Oscar Rovira and now a SETsquared Bath member, has raised investment with US based accelerator Y Combinator.

Y Combinator is one of world’s leading early-stage investors, which has previously helped launch global brands including Airbnb, Dropbox and Stripe. Neuro is taking part in the third online accelerator cohort, through which the team will benefit from seed investment plus intensive mentoring and guidance from their four assigned investment partners all of whom are previous founders who have exited very successful companies

Each cohort culminates in a ‘demo day’ when the start-ups present their companies to a carefully selected, invite-only audience, with the potential to raise further investment.

Neuro’s vision is to create one easy, consistent way to develop machine learning algorithms. It typically takes machine learning engineers weeks to months to create the server infrastructure and software layout they require and then a significant amount of time to maintain it. Neuro AI’s software infrastructure solution does all of this for them, saving engineers a significant amount of time and costs, enabling them to focus solely on their core product offering.

Additionally, it delivers significant energy savings and a positive environmental impact, as servers do not need to be run 24 hours a day, seven days a week, only as and when they required.

Paul Hetherington, a former Bath Mechanical and Electrical Engineering student commented on his start-up journey so far: “Whilst studying we were very fortunate to win a £15k Innovation Award from SETsquared Bath and the University of Bath. The funds helped us get set-up without having to worry about finances or getting an additional job, so it was a great support. We then pitched at SETsquared’s first GradInvest event which gave us the opportunity to meet many investors, practice our pitch and start a lot of important conversations with potential supporters.”

“Being accepted onto Y Combinator is just a dream come true. It’s helped launched some of the most successful tech companies in the world and we want to follow in their footsteps. We’re here to learn and soak up as much knowledge and experience as we can and hopefully raise further investment.”

The next steps for Neuro’s growth are to expand its customer base and intellectual property portfolio as well as introduce its hardware solution and start building the rest of the software stack for building machine learning algorithms.