زد إم إل
Paris-based startup building inference software, including an open-source framework and the ZML/LLMD language-model server, that runs AI models across NVIDIA, AMD, Google, Intel and Apple hardware.
Industry: AI inference software | Location: Paris, France | Founded: 2024 | Total Funding: USD 20M
About زد إم إل
ZML is a Paris-based company that builds software for running artificial intelligence models on different kinds of chips. Its website describes it as an AI engineering lab building inference software that separates models from the hardware beneath them. TechCrunch reported in July 2026 that it has about 20 employees.
Steeve Morin is the founder. He was previously vice president of engineering at Zenly, which Snapchat acquired in 2017. Nordic9 reported that he founded ZML in 2024, and TechCrunch said the company released an open-source inference framework that year.
The ZML framework is published on GitHub under the Apache 2.0 licence. It is written in Zig and built on MLIR, OpenXLA and Bazel, and it supports NVIDIA CUDA, AMD ROCm, Intel oneAPI, Google TPU and AWS Trainium and Inferentia 2. On 24 March 2026 ZML released version 2, which compiles models for NVIDIA, AMD, TPU and Trainium from a single codebase.
ZML launched ZML/LLMD in alpha on 8 July 2026. It is a self-contained server for large language models that runs on NVIDIA, AMD, Google TPU, Intel and Apple hardware and supports Llama, Gemma, Qwen and Mistral models. Unlike the framework, LLMD is not open source; ZML made it free to learn how it is used, and Morin said it was too early to say when it might become paid. On 21 July 2026 ZML added support for Poolside's Laguna S 2.1 model, in collaboration with Poolside.
Nordic9 reported on 30 June 2026 that ZML had raised 20 million dollars in a combined pre-seed and seed round led by 20VC, with participation from >commit, AAL VC, Drysdale Ventures, Kima Ventures, Kindred Capital, LocalGlobe and Puzzle Ventures. TechCrunch reported the same 20 million dollar total on 8 July 2026 and named Solomon Hykes, Clément Delangue and Julien Chaumond of Hugging Face, and Yann LeCun among the backers. CFNEWS reported on 23 July 2026 that ZML plans to start sales by early next year.
TechCrunch named Baseten, Inferact and RadixArk, the company behind SGLang, as competitors. No customers or revenue were disclosed in the sources read.
Leadership
- Steeve Morin, Founder