Who founded Essential?

Essential was founded by Ashish Vaswani, Niki Parmar in 2023.

Who are Essential's investors?

Essential's investors include Blue Ivy Ventures, Conviction, March Capital Partners, AMD Ventures, KB Investment, NVIDIA, Thrive Capital.

How much funding has Essential raised?

Essential has disclosed $36.5M raised across 1 of its 2 known rounds.

Who acquired Essential?

Essential was acquired by NVIDIA.

Where is Essential headquartered?

Essential is headquartered in San Francisco, US.

Essential

acquired by NVIDIA

San Francisco, US · Founded 2023 · 22 employees on LinkedIn · 7 known investors

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Acquired by Nvidia June 2026 · terms undisclosed · source ↗

Essential AI builds an open platform for AI research and development, providing open models, tooling, and evaluation frameworks designed for global collaboration. The company focuses on advancing frontier AI capabilities in areas including long-context language models, software engineering, and optimizations for next-generation hardware.

AI & Machine Learning Cloud Computing Data & Infrastructure Developer Tools

Founders & leadership

Essential was founded in 2023 by Ashish Vaswani and Niki Parmar.

Ashish Vaswani FounderPreviously a staff research scientist at Google Brain, where he co-authored work on transformer architectures, and co-founder and chief scientist at Adept AI Labs. He earned his PhD at the University of Southern California and worked as a computer scientist at the Information Sciences Institute and, more recently, NVIDIA.

Niki ParmarCo-Founder2023–2024

James MontgomeryNamed on SEC filing

Investors · 7

Blue Ivy Ventureslisted by Blue Ivy VenturesBoston

How we know: Blue Ivy Ventures's portfolio page · Not right? Tell us

Convictionlisted by ConvictionSan Francisco · $1M – $25M

How we know: Conviction's portfolio page · the VCSheet dataset · open dataset · 5k.vc investor directory · Not right? Tell us

March Capital Partnerslisted by March Capital PartnersSanta Monica

How we know: March Capital Partners's portfolio page · a partner's Signal profile · the VCSheet dataset · Not right? Tell us

AMD VenturesreportedSanta Clara

How we know: open dataset · 5k.vc investor directory · Not right? Tell us

KB InvestmentreportedSeoul

How we know: press coverage · open dataset · 5k.vc investor directory · Not right? Tell us

NVIDIAreportedSanta Clara

How we know: press coverage · funding news · Not right? Tell us

Thrive CapitalreportedNew York · $500K – $25M

How we know: press coverage · Not right? Tell us

Reported raises · per SEC filings

Form D private placements

$36.5M disclosed across 1 of 2 rounds · 2017–2023

▶$36.5MraisedNov 2023 · 8 investors · Other Technology

Rule 506(b)

Officers, directors & promoters on the filing

James MontgomeryDirector
Niki ParmarExecutive Officer, Director
Ashish VaswaniExecutive Officer, Director

Offering amount: $51.5M
Amount sold: $36.5M
First sale: Oct 2023
Incorporated: Corporation, Delaware, 2023
Federal exemptions: 06b

Full filing on SEC EDGAR ↗

Source: SEC EDGAR Form D. Amounts as filed; amended filings shown once at their latest values.

Founder mafia

2 people who came through Essential went on to found or lead other companies.

Saurabh SrivastavaHead of Research, Code IntelligenceFounded Warpdrive by Synthetic Minds +1 Saad JamalMember of Technical StaffFounded Antigen

Related companies · 2

Hugging FaceHugging Face is a collaboration platform that hosts and provides access to machine learning models, datasets, and applications. It offers both open-source tools for the ML community and paid compute and enterprise solutions for teams building AI applications.

NVIDIANVIDIA designs GPUs, AI computing hardware, and software platforms for AI development, data centers, autonomous vehicles, and robotics, serving developers, researchers, and enterprises. Its offerings include AI models, power architecture for AI factories, and compute infrastructure used across industries such as manufacturing, healthcare, and automotive.

Companies working in the same space as Essential.

Frequently asked questions

What does Essential do?: Essential AI builds an open platform for AI research and development, providing open models, tooling, and evaluation frameworks designed for global collaboration. The company focuses on advancing frontier AI capabilities in areas including long-context language models, software engineering, and optimizations for next-generation hardware.
Who founded Essential?: Essential was founded by Ashish Vaswani, Niki Parmar in 2023.
Who are Essential's investors?: Essential's investors include Blue Ivy Ventures, Conviction, March Capital Partners, AMD Ventures, KB Investment, NVIDIA, Thrive Capital.
How much funding has Essential raised?: Essential has disclosed $36.5M raised across 1 of its 2 known rounds.
Who acquired Essential?: Essential was acquired by NVIDIA.
Where is Essential headquartered?: Essential is headquartered in San Francisco, US.