Prem AI, with Sequoia China and Marvel Studios’ founder support, seeks $100m to end rented enterprise intelligence era, says report
Prem AI, the Lugano-based startup that lets hedge funds and law firms run artificial intelligence on their own servers, is reportedly seeking to raise $100 million in a Series A round at a valuation of at least $500 million. The company expects to close the fundraising in the third quarter of 2026, according to sources familiar with the matter.
Funding round and valuation
The target valuation marks a significant step-up for the company, which raised a $14 million seed round in April 2024 – when it was still known as Prem Labs – and a $6.1 million bridge round at a $200 million valuation. If the Series A closes at the higher figure, it would represent a 2.5‑fold increase in roughly two years. Prem AI, whose team currently comprises 35 people and is expanding, intends to use the capital to grow its headcount and accelerate product development.
Fluso: an encrypted AI workspace
The fundraising coincides with the launch of Fluso, an encrypted AI workspace that runs agents and automates tasks entirely inside a customer’s own infrastructure. The product is designed for deployment on a private cloud, a virtual private cloud, or a fully air‑gapped on‑premise environment. It runs on open‑weight models, meaning every parameter can be audited, and data never enters a third‑party training pipeline. A free tier is also available, positioning Fluso as a consumer‑facing entry point into Prem’s broader infrastructure play.
The platform is built for organisations where data leaving the building is simply not an option – and that, according to founder Simone Giacomelli, is a rapidly growing category.
Why hedge funds and law firms need private AI infrastructure
Every API call to OpenAI or Anthropic is also a data transfer. Trading strategies, legal documents and client records are stored on third‑party servers governed by someone else’s terms of service, under a US legal regime that can compel disclosure. For a hedge fund or a law firm, that is not an abstract concern: it is a competitive and regulatory exposure that compounds over time.
Hedge funds have been early adopters of AI, with a significant percentage already using the technology for trading decisions, research and operations. Yet the risks are well documented. A US Senate report has highlighted inadequate disclosures around AI use in hedge funds and warned of potential threats to market stability. Concerns over data privacy, algorithmic bias and over‑reliance on technology are prompting firms to look for alternatives that keep sensitive information under their own control.
Law firms face a different but equally acute set of pressures. Their ethical obligations around client confidentiality mean that using consumer‑grade AI tools can lead to violations of professional duties and expose the firm to liability. Professional‑grade solutions with robust data security and privacy controls have become essential, and regulators are increasingly examining AI’s role in finance, with calls for clearer frameworks and baseline standards for its use in trading decisions.
The concept of “sovereign AI” – once mostly a debate about countries and cloud dependency – now applies to any firm whose competitive edge lives in its data. Giacomelli co‑founded SingularityNET, the decentralised AI network, before starting Prem in 2023. The company is built around a single architectural bet: that firms handling the most sensitive data will eventually refuse to rent intelligence from a third party and will demand infrastructure they can inspect, own and control.
Prem combines self‑hosted model deployment with what it calls a ready‑to‑use application layer, giving customers a full AI stack – from inference to agent automation – without requiring them to assemble it from parts. The self‑hosted category is not empty: Databricks offers on‑premise AI, and open‑source models from Meta (including the Llama series) and Mistral AI (Mistral 7B, Mixtral 8x7B and the Mistral 3 family) give enterprises a starting point. But Prem packages the full stack as a finished product rather than a toolkit. The difference, in Giacomelli’s framing, is the application layer: security without usability is infrastructure that never gets used.
Investor backing
Known investors from previous rounds include Fan Zhang, co‑founder of Sequoia Capital China, and David Maisel, the founding chairman of Marvel Studios who engineered its $4 billion sale to Disney in 2009. Other previous backers include Jim Breyer of Breyer Capital and Index Ventures. Prem has not confirmed which investors are participating in the current Series A round.
