Liquid AI — Startup Profile

The MIT-born startup making frontier-grade AI run on phones, cars, and edge hardware

HQ: Cambridge, MA | Founded: 2023 | Employees: ~100-150 (mid-2026) | Stage: Private; ~$2.3B (Dec 2024); no new round through Aug 2026 | Website: https://liquid.ai

About

Liquid AI was founded in March 2023 as an MIT CSAIL spinoff in Cambridge, MA by Ramin Hasani (CEO), Mathias Lechner (CTO), Alexander Amini (CSO), and Daniela Rus (MIT CSAIL director; co-founder, board, technical adviser). It builds Liquid Foundation Models (LFM) - efficient, interpretable models derived from liquid time-constant (LTC) networks - covering text (LFM, LFM2, LFM2.5 from 350M to 8B incl. an MoE line), vision-language, audio, and retrieval nano-models. The company raised a disputed-size seed (~$37.5-46.6M, Dec 2023) and a $250M AMD-led Series A at ~$2.3B (Dec 2024). Deployments include Mercedes-Benz MBUX (multi-year, N. America, production target H2 2026), Samsung/Samsung NEXT, Shopify model testing, Alef Education (1.5M students / 14,000 K-12 schools, Jan 2026), and DARPA aircraft testing. ~52 models / 3,100+ variants have reached 38M+ Hugging Face downloads. The company has not disclosed a new funding round after Aug 2026.

The Take

Liquid AI is the anti-hyperscale bet: a ~$2.3B company proving that frontier-ish AI can run in 3GB of RAM at 228 tokens/sec on an Apple M5, with no cloud round-trip. Its LFM2.5 family (350M to 8B, plus vision-language and audio), ~52 models and 38M+ Hugging Face downloads, is anchored by a Mercedes-Benz MBUX production deployment (N. America, H2 2026) - the first large-scale automotive embed of a lab's models. Backed by AMD (Series A lead), Daniela Rus's MIT lineage, and a rare open license that only charges companies above $10M revenue, the company is building the 'device-native' flywheel. The bull case: edge is where the users are; the bear case: no frontier flagship, thin revenue (~$13M est.), and capability ceilings that keep it out of heavy reasoning workloads.

Key Metrics

Latest Valuation: ~$2.3B (AMD-led Series A, Dec 2024)
Total Funding Raised: ~$290-300M (seed + Series A)
Flagship Line: LFM2.5 (350M-8B, MoE, VL, Audio)
Marquee Customer: Mercedes-Benz (MBUX, H2 2026 production)
Model Downloads: 38M+ Hugging Face downloads (2026)
Employees: ~100-150 (mid-2026)

Funding Rounds

Round: $37.5-46.6M (varies by source) (2023-12-06) — OSS Capital, Stephen Pagliuca (PagsGroup)
Round: $250M (2024-12-13) — AMD

Key People

Ramin Hasani
Mathias Lechner
Alexander Amini
Daniela Rus
Jeffrey Li

Key Competitors

Google (Gemma) —
Meta (Llama 3.2 edge) —
Microsoft (Phi) —
Apple (onsoc) —

Timeline Highlights

2026-07/08: LFM2.5 monthly cadence
2026-04-23: Mercedes-Benz partnership
2026-01: Alef Education deployment
2025-01: LFM-7B + DARPA testing
2024-12-13: Series A $250M
2024-09-30: LFM launch
2023-12-06: Seed
2023-03: Founded

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