The Harvey earns $80 million, while Lee Kai-Fu’s Chinese AI business aims to raise up to $200 million.
AI startups: a promising area for US funding
According to The Information, which cited data from PitchBook, U.S. investments in AI startups increased by 150% in the third quarter compared to the same period last year. In contrast, during the same time period, all startups had a decline of 21%.
Even for AI businesses, getting paid these days is not as simple. While companies like Anthropic and OpenAI continue to command the most attention, others must put in more effort to secure funding. A portion of the problem stems from the fact that a large number of AI startups utilize OpenAI and tech giants’ LLMs, which are intended for the same clientele as the startups.
News about funding
According to The Information, Anthropic, the firm created by two executives from OpenAI and considered to be its fiercest competitor, is attempting to fund $750 million, which could potentially increase the startup’s valuation to $18 billion. Amazon contributed $4 billion to the business earlier this year, and Google contributed $300 million in addition to taking part in a $450 million series C round.
According to the report it intends to rent servers from AWS and Google for “billions” of dollars over the next few years in order to train and power its Claude language models.
Anthropic allegedly predicted that by the end of this year, its revenue run rate will surpass $200 million, and by the end of 2024, it would surge to $500 million.
Investors were not deterred by Anthropic’s unconventional governance structure, despite the recent instability surrounding OpenAI. A five-member trust that has no financial stake in the firm is in charge of the board; their job is to make sure the AI models are beneficial to humanity in the long term. Due to its incorporation as a public benefit company, Anthropic’s board is able to strike a balance between its own financial interests and the welfare of the public.
Early on, the business stressed the importance of safe AI in its language models.
01.AI
Chinese AI startup 1. AI is creating huge, foundational language models that are available for free. Venture capitalist and former president of Google China Lee Kai-fu introduced it.
According to Reuters, the Yi-34B model, which has 34 billion parameters, is the startup’s debut offering. It was the first Chinese LLM to rank #1 on Hugging Face.
Lee stated he intends to retain the larger 01.AI models confidential and to make the smaller models open-source. According to him, popular foundation models today are biased toward American ideals and do not suit other cultural contexts.
In a Wall Street Journal opinion piece, Lee stated that “every nation should have a high-quality model tailored to its culture, values, religion, and language.”
Most recent funding: $200 million or more, as reported by Reuters
Harvey
A generative AI platform called Harvey is provided by a legal AI startup to assist law firms, PSPs, and private equity companies in locating and evaluating internal and external data. According to the business, since April, revenue has increased tenfold, while platform engagement has increased “exponentially.”
It is collaborating with OpenAI to create foundation models tailored to particular fields.
Most recent funding: series B at $80 million
Principal financiers: Elad Gil, a digital entrepreneur, and Kleiner Perkins
Additional investors: Sequoia and the OpenAI Startup Fund
Funding plans: Increase the number of bespoke models built, grow the staff, and add more features to the product suite