- 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.
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.
Paris-based startup Poolside AI has raised $126 million in a seed round led by French billionaire Xavier Niel and US VC Felicis, to develop an AI model that can write software code and eventually enable users to create applications without coding experience, with the company also opening a French subsidiary and relocating its HQ to Paris in a boost to the country's AI ambitions.
IBM CEO Arvind Krishna has invested $235 million in the $4.5 billion AI startup Hugging Face, with IBM and Hugging Face already collaborating on AI tools and models, including a partnership with NASA.
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.
Actor Ashton Kutcher's venture capital firm, Sound Ventures, is investing in open source AI company Hugging Face, as part of a $235 million series D funding round, bringing Hugging Face's valuation to $4.5 billion.
Arm is aiming to raise up to $4.87 billion in its upcoming IPO, which could value the chip design firm at $52 billion, as it looks to tap into institutional funds and boost investments in research and development, particularly in artificial intelligence.
Silicon Valley-based AI chip startup d-Matrix has raised $110 million in funding, including investment from Microsoft, as it aims to compete with Nvidia in the AI chip market by focusing on the "inference" portion of AI processing.
Imbue, a woman-led AI research startup, has raised $200 million in a Series B funding round led by the Astera Institute, valuing the company at over $1 billion, but it could be years before it reveals a product. Imbue's focus is on developing AI "agents" that can simulate human decision-making to complete complex tasks, and it has access to 10,000 Nvidia H100 GPUs to build these agents. The startup is still in the early stages and has not yet released a demo of its agents.
Salesforce is donating $11 million to San Francisco and Oakland public schools to prepare students for careers in artificial intelligence, as part of a larger $20 million investment in education, aiming to advance students' digital skills and provide better access to tech and AI careers.
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.
AI stocks have emerged as the driving force behind the stock market rally, with nearly $500 billion added to the US market cap in 2023, led by companies like NVIDIA and Apple, and the growth prospects of AI continue to be driven by rising demand for software and semiconductor chips.
Ernst & Young has invested $1.4 billion in AI technologies and launched a new AI-powered platform, EY.ai, to help organizations adopt AI and unlock economic value responsibly.
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.
LastMile AI has raised $10 million in a seed funding round to develop and integrate generative AI models into apps, aiming to democratize generative AI for software engineers and simplify the AI developer journey.
Three Chinese firms, including AI software company Beijing Fourth Paradigm, are aiming to raise up to $280 million in Hong Kong initial public offerings, with Fourth Paradigm seeking to raise up to $144 million by selling 18.4 million shares.
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.
AI startup Darrow has raised $35 million in funding for its AI-powered data engine that searches for class action litigation potential, with active cases resulting from its insights currently totaling around $10 billion in claims, and plans to use the funding to expand its team, add new legal domains to its tools, and invest in technology assets.
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.
Mesh, a startup developing a service to transfer and manage digital assets, has raised $22 million in funding to further develop its tools and support its go-to-market operations.
