Expanse
Compute-prediction software company founded by University of Edinburgh students.
Expanse is an Edinburgh-founded start-up whose software predicts the compute an AI workload will need before it runs. On 16 September 2026 it raised a $5.3m seed round led by Crane Venture Partners.
Last refreshed: 22 September 2026 · Appears in 1 active topic
Timeline for Expanse
Raised a USD5.3 million seed round for compute-prediction software
UK Startups and Innovation: Edinburgh students raise $5.3m seedBackground
Expanse is an Edinburgh-founded start-up building software that predicts the GPU, CPU, memory and runtime an AI workload will need before it runs, aiming to cut wasted cloud spend. Four University of Edinburgh graduates founded the company in October 2025: Ismaeel Bashir, Nikodem Bieniek, Eren Mendi and Yafet Melake. Bashir had developed a multimodal HPC resource-prediction system as a master's student at the university's EPCC (Edinburgh Parallel Computing Centre).
The team won Edinburgh Innovations' Launch Point competition in September 2025 before joining Y Combinator's accelerator in San Francisco. On 16 September 2026 it raised a $5.3m seed round, led by Crane Venture Partners with PXN Ventures and angel investors including former DeepMind researchers.
Expanse illustrates a fast route from a UK university research group to a Silicon Valley-backed start-up, targeting a concrete cost problem, over-provisioned AI compute, that is growing as AI training spend scales.
