
Spice.ai is a open source data and AI inference engine. Build AI apps with SQL query federation, acceleration, search, and retrieval for AI grounded in enterprise data.

Spice.ai is a open source data and AI inference engine. Build AI apps with SQL query federation, acceleration, search, and retrieval for AI grounded in enterprise data.
Founded: June 2021
Headquarters: Seattle, Washington
Product: Open-source operational data lakehouse and compute engine for data-grounded AI
Open-source milestone: Spice.ai Open Source 1.0-stable released Jan 22, 2025
Notable customers: Twilio, Barracuda, NRC Health
Data-grounded AI applications and low-latency inference over enterprise data
2021
Technology, Information and Internet
$1M
Announced pre-seed funding round; investors reported include Madrona Venture Group, Picus Capital, TA Ventures and angels such as Nat Friedman and Mark Russinovich.
Seed round reported on Sep 7, 2022; multiple investors listed.
βMadrona Venture Group and several prominent angel/backing investors (including Nat Friedman and Mark Russinovich) participated in early rounds.β
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Building data-driven AI applications and agents is too complex, even for advanced developers. At Spice AI, weβre making it simpler by helping developers combine code, data, and AI to build truly intelligent, decision-making systems. Our mission is to make this as easy as creating a modern web page.
We created Spice.ai OSS , a portable AI database written in Rust with a unified SQL interface to query, materialize, and accelerate data from any source, co-located with machine learning models. By bringing compute, data, and models together, Spice OSS enables secure AI-Feedback-Loops (AI-Fly-Wheels) for apps and agents to learn and adapt. We just announced the 1.0-stable release of Spice.ai OSS.
For a deeper dive into the vision, watch Luke's CMU Databases talk on Spice.ai OSS at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tyM-ec1lKfU and read his Materialized View interview at https://materializedview.io/p/building-a-cdn-for-databases-spice-ai.
We're also building the Spice.ai Cloud Platform , offering managed, cloud-scale Spice.ai OSS along with tools for high-performance SQL, machine learning training, and inference in an interconnected AI backend-as-a-service.
At Spice AI, we hire for MEI: Merit, Excellence, and Intelligence. We're looking for exceptional, top-tier engineers - A players - who are driven to solve hard problems and push the boundaries of what's possible for AI.
This role requires a Forward Deployed Engineer to embed with customers and partners, accelerating adoption through direct engineering contributions. Responsibilities include deploying, optimizing, and extending Spice.ai solutions in production environments, while collaborating on product improvements.
If open source, distributed systems, and real-world search & AI deployment drive you, apply.
Who We Are Looking For
What We're Looking For
In This Role, You'll
Your First 90 Days
About Spice AI Founded in June 2021 by Microsoft and GitHub alumni Luke Kim and Phillip LeBlanc, Spice AI creates technology to help developers build intelligent applications and agents that learn and adapt.
Before co-founding Spice AI, Luke was the co-creator of Azure Incubations in the Office of the Azure CTO, where he led cross-functional engineering teams to create and develop technologies including Dapr and OAM.
Spice AI is backed by some of the top industry angel investors and leaders, including Nat Friedman, Mark Russinovich, CTO of Microsoft Azure, and Thomas Dohmke, CEO of GitHub, who is also on the board.
Spice AI also has notable VC backing from Madrona Venture Group, Basis Set Ventures, Founders' Co-op, and Picus Capital.
Learn more:
We may use artificial intelligence (AI) tools to support parts of the hiring process, such as reviewing applications, analyzing resumes, or assessing responses. These tools assist our recruitment team but do not replace human judgment. Final hiring decisions are ultimately made by humans. If you would like more information about how your data is processed, please contact us.
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