- Foundry Technologies is in talks to raise money at a valuation of $350 million, a significant increase from its previous valuation of $50 million.
- The increase in valuation highlights the trend of hot companies in the AI sector raising money at rapidly escalating valuations.
- Foundry is one of many AI startups that have experienced a meteoric rise in valuation this year.
- The company plans to rent servers to companies for running AI software.
- The risky pandemic-era fundraising trend of rapidly increasing valuations in short periods of time has returned.
Main topic: The crypto startup Auradine raised $81 million in its first fundraise, despite having no product or customers at the time.
Key points:
1. Auradine founders raised $81 million with just a pitch deck, surprising investors.
2. The company later unveiled its first product, a Bitcoin chip and mining system called Teraflux.
3. Auradine plans to develop hardware for specialized computations beyond Bitcoin mining, but details about its other offerings remain undisclosed.
Main topic: Anthropic raises $100 million in funding for its AI assistant Claude.
Key points:
1. Anthropic, a ChatGPT rival, secured a $100 million investment from SK Telecom.
2. The funding will support the development of a customized language model for telcos.
3. Anthropic has raised over $1.4 billion in the past 16 months, with previous investments from Google and other prominent investors.
Main topic: Funding announcement for Caden's data AI platform
Key points:
1. Caden has raised $15 million in a Series A funding round led by Nava Ventures.
2. The funding will accelerate the development and go-to-market of Caden's data AI platform.
3. Caden empowers users to monetize their personal data and provides enterprise customers with a unique data set through its intelligence suite, CadenOS.
Main Topic: Largest startup funding deals in the US in 2023
Key Points:
1. Abcuro raises $155 million in a Series B financing round for biotech.
2. Teamshares secures $124 million in a Series D round for fintech.
3. Pivotal Commware receives $102 million in a Series D round for telecommunications.
The main topic is the funding round of Sirius Technologies, a Singapore-based enterprise architecture tech startup.
1. Sirius Technologies has raised $18 million in its Series A funding round.
2. The funding round was anchored by venture capital investors Integra Partners and Cento Ventures.
3. This funding will support the growth and development of Sirius Technologies.
Prins AI, a provider of AI-driven digital persona training products, has raised $22 million in a Series A+ funding round to advance deep learning technologies, expand the team, and enhance marketing and sales efforts.
California-based startup Genesis Therapeutics has raised $200 million in Series B funding, led by Andreessen Horowitz Bio + Health and an unnamed US-based life-sciences-focused investor, to further develop its AI platform for small-molecule drug discovery and expand its pipeline.
Main topic: Fintech startup Ramp raises $300 million in funding at a post-money valuation of $5.8 billion.
Key points:
1. Ramp secures $300 million in a funding round co-led by Thrive Capital and Sands Capital.
2. The funding will be used to accelerate product development, expand into adjacent categories, and hire significantly.
3. Ramp has experienced strong growth, adding new features and customers, and now serves businesses of all sizes.
The main topic is the funding raised by Ramp, a corporate card and expense automation platform.
Key points:
1. Ramp raised $300 million in funding at a $5.8 billion post-money valuation, which is a 28% drop from its previous valuation of $8.1 billion.
2. Existing investors such as Thrive Capital, Sands Capital, General Catalyst, and Founders Fund participated in the new financing round.
3. Ramp plans to use the funds for product development, hiring, and expansion into the procurement space.
Main Topic: AI startup Hugging Face seeking to raise millions from Salesforce and other investors
Key Points:
1. Hugging Face aims to raise $200 million in venture capital, with Salesforce leading the round.
2. Hugging Face operates a platform similar to GitHub for hosting AI models, with over 100,000 open-source models available.
3. The proposed investment would value Hugging Face at $4 billion, positioning it as a key player in the development of open-source AI technologies.
Main topic: AI startup Hugging Face raising $200 million funding round at a $4 billion valuation.
Key points:
1. Hugging Face is raising approximately $200 million in funding.
2. The funding round is led by Salesforce Ventures at a valuation of $4 billion.
3. Hugging Face allows companies to store and use AI software and hosts open-source AI models for developers.
Hugging Face, an AI startup, has raised $235 million in a Series D funding round, with participation from tech giants such as Google, Amazon, Nvidia, and IBM, and now has a valuation of $4.5 billion, signaling the growing demand for AI platforms and tools.
Main topic: AI startup Modular raises $100 million in funding round.
Key points:
1. Modular has raised $100 million in a funding round led by General Catalyst, with participation from Google Ventures, SV Angel, Greylock, and Factory.
2. The company did not disclose the valuation at which it raised capital, but a report by The Information put it at $600 million.
3. Modular aims to provide a more affordable alternative to AI development for enterprises through its software, bypassing the need for expensive chips from tech companies like Nvidia.
Main topic: AI startup Hugging Face raises $235 million in Series D funding round.
Key points:
1. Hugging Face's latest funding round brings its total capital raised to $395.2 million, valuing the firm at $4.5 billion.
2. Hugging Face provides data science tools and a model hub with over a million repositories.
3. The startup aims to be the open platform empowering the paradigm shift towards AI.
Main topic: AI startup Hugging Face's $4.5 billion valuation in a $235 million funding round.
Key points:
1. Hugging Face's funding round is supported by major tech players, including Salesforce, Google, and Nvidia.
2. The rapid growth of AI adoption and investments in AI startups indicate its potential as the next technology frontier.
3. Hugging Face plans to use the funds to expand its team and invest in technology, with revenue projected to increase fivefold this year.
AI21 Labs, a text-generating AI startup, has raised $155 million in a Series C funding round, bringing its total raised to $283 million and valuing the company at $1.4 billion, with plans to expand its workforce and accelerate its R&D efforts.
AI has garnered immense investment from venture capitalists, with over $40 billion poured into AI startups in the first half of 2023, raising concerns about who will benefit financially from its potential impact.
AI In brief X, formerly known as Twitter, has updated its privacy policy to state that it may train its AI models on user posts, with the policy change expected to take effect on September 29; however, CEO Elon Musk has clarified that private data, such as text in direct messages, will not be used to train the models.
Doug Lenat, a prominent figure in the field of AI, has passed away, leaving behind a legacy of pioneering work in neurosymbolic systems and machine reasoning.
AI21 Labs, an Israeli startup, has raised $155 million in its Series C round, with a valuation of $1.4 billion; the company offers API access to its language models and tools designed for various tasks like summarization and question answering.
US newspaper chain Gannett has temporarily halted the publication of AI-generated sports articles after the machine-written pieces received criticism for their errors and poor writing quality.
Despite a decrease in venture capital investments in June, new crypto projects are still attracting funding, including Orbital's $6.4 million raise for expanding blockchain payment infrastructure, unshETH's $3.3 million seed round for decentralized finance solutions, ZTX's $13 million funding for Web3 infrastructure development, Stroom Network's $3.5 million raise for Bitcoin staking, and Fxhash's $5 million funding for its digital art platform.
Imbue, an AI research lab, has raised $200 million in Series B funding to develop AI systems that can reason and code, with the aim of building practical AI agents that can accomplish larger goals and work safely in the real world.
The trading volume of AI tokens showed a moderate increase last month, reaching around $870 million, despite controversy surrounding Worldcoin's launch, but there was a significant decrease compared to the beginning of the year.
European AI startup Druid has raised $30 million in a Series B funding round to support its U.S. growth, which currently accounts for the majority of its revenue, as it expands its conversational business applications powered by generative AI.
Artificial intelligence and analytics firm Databricks has raised over $500 million in a Series I funding round, including strategic investor Nvidia, as it prepares for an anticipated IPO and expands its partnership with Nvidia to focus on generative AI. The fundraising round values Databricks at $43 billion and positions it as the eighth-most valuable private company globally. The company is closely monitoring the IPO market but will not be quick to go public, waiting for the macro environment to stabilize.
San Francisco-based AI startup Writer has raised $100 million in a funding round led by Iconiq Growth, bringing its valuation to $500 million, and aims to help businesses use large language models to generate content across different departments.
Pryon, an AI-powered platform for enterprise knowledge bases, has raised $100 million in funding to support its growth and expansion of its team, partnerships, and international presence, with a valuation between $500 million and $750 million.
Israeli cybersecurity startup Legit Security has raised $40 million in a Series B funding round led by US venture capital firm CRV to help businesses protect their AI-based applications from cyberthreats and security breaches. The funds will be used to boost sales, R&D, and address the emerging threat posed by AI and large language models in application development.
In 2023, the largest startup funding deals in the U.S. included Mapbox raising $280 million for location-mapping AI, Openly securing $100 million for insurance coverage, and Pryon and Writer each raising $100 million for their AI platforms.
Infosys and Microsoft have partnered to develop AI solutions using services like Infosys Topaz and Microsoft Azure, French billionaire Xavier Niel plans to invest $212 million in AI to retain French talent, AppyHigh has launched an AI-powered app bundle, former DeepMind researcher Vishal Maini has raised $14 million for his new AI venture fund, and Wishpond has unveiled Sales Email AI to streamline sales communications.
OneChronos, a technology company leveraging advances in auction theory and artificial intelligence to optimize financial markets, has raised $40 million in a Series B investment round led by Addition, which will be used to expand to new markets and launch new products.
AI Clearing, an AI-powered platform, has raised $14 million in a Series A funding round led by Prudence to expand its construction progress tracking and quality control technology for large infrastructure projects.
Cambridge-based startup Unitary AI has raised $15 million in Series A funding to expand its "multimodal" approach to content moderation, which combines text, sound, and visuals to better analyze videos and improve accuracy in identifying harmful content. The funding will be used to hire more talent and expand into new regions. The company's platform is already classifying 6 million videos per day, and its annual recurring revenue is now in the millions, although specific customer names were not disclosed.
Anthropic, an artificial intelligence startup, is reportedly in talks to raise $2 billion in funding after securing a $4 billion investment from Amazon, as tech companies rush to claim a share of Silicon Valley's AI boom.
AI startup Anthropic is reportedly in talks with investors, including Google, to raise an additional $2 billion in funding at a valuation between $20 billion and $30 billion, just weeks after securing a $4 billion investment from Amazon. Meanwhile, rival OpenAI is said to be considering selling shares at a staggering $90 billion valuation, a significant surge from its valuation of $29 billion just a few months ago. Other AI startups, such as Character.AI and Prins AI, are also seeking significant valuation jumps in their funding rounds.
Cryptocurrency trading and lending platform Membrane Labs has raised $20 million in funding to help build a mature trading infrastructure for the crypto industry and increase transparency and risk management.
Imbue, an artificial intelligence startup, has secured an additional $12 million in funding, bringing its total raised to over $210 million, with investors including Amazon's Alexa Fund and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt. The company aims to develop foundation models for AI systems capable of performing various tasks without close supervision.
AI software startup Moreh has raised $22 million in a Series B funding round, with investors including AMD and KT, to develop its flagship AI software, MoAI, which enables the optimization and creation of AI models compatible with existing machine learning frameworks and GPUs, aiming to address the inadequate AI infrastructure for large-scale models.
Eve, a new startup in the legal AI market, has raised $14 million in seed funding to offer a personalized AI legal assistant for tasks like document review and legal research, joining other startups in the increasingly competitive space.
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