eBusiness Weekly
Fusemachines, which develops artificial intelligence products for enterprise use, is merging with a blank check company in a US$200 million deal to begin trading on the Nasdaq.
The combination with CSLM Acquisition Corp is expected to be completed by the end of the second quarter, the companies said. Fusemachines, based in New York, will trade under the ticker FUSE.
Founded in 2013 by Nepal-born entrepreneur Sameer Maskey, Fusemachines has built AI solutions for customers such as media company Time, airport concession operator OTG and luxury-goods firm Tapestry, the owner of brands including Coach and Kate Spade.
The merger gives it funds to expand and improve its product offering as AI adoption gathers speed, fueled by the popularity of generative AI service ChatGPT.
“Artificial intelligence is booming now and there’s a huge talent gap, but we’ve been training and deploying in AI for 11 years,” Maskey, 45, said in a video interview.
Special purpose acquisition company CSLM is affiliated with Consilium Investment Management, formed in 2004 with a focus on frontier and emerging market companies.
Other parties are likely to join as investors in conjunction with the merger, Maskey said. Capital received from them could increase the combination’s post-money valuation.
SPAC deals attained a bubble-like frenzy during the pandemic, as that option gave companies an easier way to a listing than a traditional initial public offering.
More recently, the method has waned in popularity after many companies ran into financial problems. But an AI firm going public, particularly a long-established one, is a rarity even as many such companies work toward a listing.
Maskey, born and raised in Nepal, moved to the US for his undergraduate studies and went on to complete a PhD from Columbia University. He started a fellowship program in 2017 to train students in Nepal, and then hired many of them to build solutions for customers. One of Fusemachines’ earliest clients was the City of New York, for which the startup deployed thousands of chatbots.
More recently, Fusemachines expanded its training program to Latin America and will soon extend it to southern India. Maskey also plans to take it to less-privileged regions in the US.
More than 800 fellows have been trained so far, with over a hundred more in training. The curriculum includes modules in computer vision, natural language processing and machine learning.
“Our trained talent is competitive with engineers in Silicon Valley,” said Maskey, also Fusemachines’ chief executive officer.
Maskey said he’s adding a specialisation in generative AI, a course he’s designed and begun teaching at Columbia University. Recently, Fusemachines has been reviving its older products by infusing them with generative AI.
The startup has previously raised a total of US$10 million of seed funding by Future Perfect Ventures and Dolma Impact Fund. It employs nearly 500, mainly in Nepal and North America. — Bloomberg
