MLOps and AI Observability Startups Raise $112M
What happened
Venture capital continues to flow into the MLOps sector, with two significant funding rounds announced. AI observability platform Selector raised $32 million to help enterprises reduce downtime. Meanwhile, Braintrust, which focuses on production AI infrastructure and real-time observability, closed an $80 million Series B funding round.
Why it matters
- Selector's funding round was led by AVP and doubled the company's valuation to $375 million, with cumulative annual recurring revenue (ARR) having doubled for four consecutive years. - Braintrust's Series B was led by ICONIQ, an investor in enterprise leaders like Snowflake and Datadog, and brings the startup's valuation to $800 million. - Selector was founded by former Juniper Networks executives Kannan Kothandaraman and Nitin Kumar to provide network-aware AIOps for multi-cloud environments. - Braintrust CEO Ankur Goyal previously founded Impira (acquired by Figma) and built Braintrust to solve the AI evaluation and observability challenges he faced building AI products internally. - Unlike traditional monitoring, Braintrust is designed to track AI-specific issues like model hallucinations and output drift, while Selector focuses on correlating data across the entire IT stack to find the root cause of service downtime. - Braintrust's platform is used by companies including Notion, Replit, Cloudflare, and Dropbox to manage production AI systems. - The global MLOps market was valued at over $2 billion in 2025 and is projected by some analysts to grow to nearly $26 billion by 2034. - The investment in Selector was driven by the need to solve what one investor called a "very expensive problem for very large companies," as even slight performance degradation is unacceptable for mission-critical infrastructure.
Key numbers
- AI observability platform Selector raised $32 million to help enterprises reduce downtime.
- Meanwhile, Braintrust, which focuses on production AI infrastructure and real-time observability, closed an $80 million Series B funding round.
- - Selector's funding round was led by AVP and doubled the company's valuation to $375 million, with cumulative annual recurring revenue (ARR) having doubled for four consecutive years.
- Braintrust's Series B was led by ICONIQ, an investor in enterprise leaders like Snowflake and Datadog, and brings the startup's valuation to $800 million.
Quick answers
What happened in MLOps and AI Observability Startups Raise $112M?
Venture capital continues to flow into the MLOps sector, with two significant funding rounds announced. AI observability platform Selector raised $32 million to help enterprises reduce downtime. Meanwhile, Braintrust, which focuses on production AI infrastructure and real-time observability, closed an $80 million Series B funding round.
Why does MLOps and AI Observability Startups Raise $112M matter?
Selector's funding round was led by AVP and doubled the company's valuation to $375 million, with cumulative annual recurring revenue (ARR) having doubled for four consecutive years. Braintrust's Series B was led by ICONIQ, an investor in enterprise leaders like Snowflake and Datadog, and brings the startup's valuation to $800 million. Selector was founded by former Juniper Networks executives Kannan Kothandaraman and Nitin Kumar to provide network-aware AIOps for multi-cloud environments. Braintrust CEO Ankur Goyal previously founded Impira (acquired by Figma) and built Braintrust to solve the AI evaluation and observability challenges he faced building AI products internally. Unlike traditional monitoring, Braintrust is designed to track AI-specific issues like model hallucinations and output drift, while Selector focuses on correlating data across the entire IT stack to find the root cause of service downtime. Braintrust's platform is used by companies including Notion, Replit, Cloudflare, and Dropbox to manage production AI systems. The global MLOps market was valued at over $2 billion in 2025 and is projected by some analysts to grow to nearly $26 billion by 2034. The investment in Selector was driven by the need to solve what one investor called a "very expensive problem for very large companies," as even slight performance degradation is unacceptable for mission-critical infrastructure.
