- 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: 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.
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.
Salesforce is leading a financing round of $200 million for Hugging Face, a startup that helps businesses use AI, at a valuation of over $4 billion, more than doubling the company's share price and private valuation.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Cathie Wood's Ark Invest predicts that AI software revenue will reach $14 trillion by 2030, and believes that Salesforce and The Trade Desk are attractive investments due to their potential in the AI market and their current valuations.
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.
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.
Craigslist founder Craig Newmark has donated $3 million to Common Sense Media to fund an artificial intelligence (AI) and education initiative, focusing on AI safety for children and providing AI literacy courses for parents and educators. Newmark is concerned about the potential for generative AI to amplify and spread disinformation, and the lack of effort by tech companies to combat dishonesty.
Data and AI company Databricks has raised $500 million in funding, valuing the company at $43 billion, as it continues to focus on AI tooling and expand its artificial intelligence capabilities. The funding round included strategic investors such as Nvidia.
Full-stack generative AI platform, Writer, has secured $100 million in a Series B funding round led by ICONIQ Growth, with participation from WndrCo, Balderton Capital, and Insight Partners, as well as Writer customers Accenture and Vanguard; the funding will be used to invest in industry-specific language models and add capabilities to its models, enabling organizations to accelerate growth, increase productivity, and ensure governance.
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.
The Washington Post analysis reveals that over 1,000 publicly traded companies mentioned AI in their recent earnings calls, indicating the growing interest and investment in the industry, with ETFs such as the First Trust Nasdaq Artificial Intelligence & Robotics ETF (ROBT 0.10%) and the Global X Autonomous & Electric Vehicles ETF (DRIV -0.48%) providing a diversified and lower-risk investment approach for those looking to capitalize on the AI boom.
European AI startups, including Mistral, ElevenLabs, and Synthesia, have attracted significant investment from venture capitalists, with investors pouring $51.9 billion into AI startups in 2023, surpassing the $65.5 billion invested in the sector in 2022. Notable investors in the European AI startup scene include Simon Menashy of MMC Ventures, Amelia Armour of Amadeus Capital, Mish Mashkautsan of Phoenix Court, and Remy Minute of Ascension.
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.
Amazon has invested $4 billion in the AI startup Anthropic, OpenAI is seeking a valuation of $80-90 billion, and Apple has been acquiring various AI companies, indicating their increasing involvement in the AI space. Additionally, Meta (formerly Facebook) is emphasizing AI over virtual reality, and the United Nations is considering AI regulation.
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.
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.
One in five of the new billion-dollar startups joining The Crunchbase Unicorn Board in 2023 were AI companies, collectively adding $21 billion in value and led by generative AI companies in various domains.
