According to the FT.OpenAI rivalry Cohere is in talks to raise up to $1 billion.
As the artificial intelligence race heats up, this will be the first time ever that the Canadian startup has received amaximumCohere has so far completed fourFinancing, the last funding round was raised in June 2023, valuing the startup at $2.2 billion. Backers at the time were Nvidia and Oracle, as well as venture capital firms Index Ventures and Inovia Capital.
Former Google scientists Aidan Gomez and Nick Frosst founded Cohere with Ivan Zhu.
Source Note: The image is generated by AI, and the image is authorized by Midjourney
Gomez is with someone.Famous's seminal Transformers paper, which revolutionized large-scale language modeling.Frosst worked at Google Brain, led by Turing Award winner Geoffrey Hinton's Toronto team.
Cohere develops large-scale language models for businesses to use their own data to build custom applications such as AI chatbots. In contrast, OpenAI's large-scale language models are intended for broader use by consumers and businesses.
CB Insights'up to dateAI startups are valued "much higher" than non-AI startups, with valuations more than 1.5x higher in Series B rounds than non-AI startups, according to the study.
However, the spike in valuations is not the result of increased funding, as valuations have continued to fall since 2021.CB Insights says that total equity deals for AI startups in 2023 fell to as low as they have been since 2017lowestLevel.
The research firm said the decline does "suggest that investors are focusing on quality across the industry."
"For select AI startups that are currently able to attract investor attention, this allows them to get better deal terms and higher valuations when raising capital."
Other Related Financing News
ElevenLabs
New York-based ElevenLabs develops AI speech solutions for creating synthesized voices. Its generation technology can be used to convert text into speech. Users can also create natural AI voices for uses such as content creation and marketing materials.
The startup has launched a series of new products, including a voice library where users can upload and access AI voices, and a voiceover studio where users can use AI to voice content in 29 languages.
up to dateFinancing:$80 million, Series B financing
Major Investors:Andreessen Horowitz, Nat Friedman (former CEO of GitHub), Daniel Gross (former Director of Machine Learning at Apple)
Other investors: Sequoia Capital, Smash Capital, SV Angel, BroadLight Capital and Credo Ventures.
Funding plan: Funds will be used for research, expansion of infrastructure, development of new products in specific verticals, and enhancement of security measures to ensure responsible deployment.
Sakana
Sakana in Japan is trying to build a basic model of "nature-inspired intelligence".
The startup was founded by former Google AI researchers Llion Jones and David Ha. Sakana has already partnered with the JapanmaximumThe company has established an artificial intelligence research partnership with NTT, a telecommunications company.
up to dateFinancing:$30 million, seed round
Lead investor: Lux Capital
Other Investors:Khosla Ventures
Funding Plan:These funds will be used to establish an AI lab in Japan, including hiring researchers and engineers.
Vicarius
New York-based Vicarius develops cybersecurity tools to help organizations protect themselves from software exploits. Its Autonomous Vulnerability Remediation Platform is designed to integrate vulnerability assessment and remediation.
up to dateFinancing:$30 million, Series B
Lead investor: Bright Pixel Capital
Other Investors:AllegisCyber Capital, AlleyCorp, Strait Capital
Funding plan:Vicarius co-founder and CEO Michael Assraf told TechCrunch that Vicarius will move to support its product roadmap and scale its team.
Recraft
Image generation platform Recraft, which launched only eight months ago but has already attracted more than 300,000 users, is attempting to provide image generation capabilities through its own base model, which it claims will "radically improve the quality of AI-generated images."
up to dateFinancing:$12 million in Series A financing
Key investors: Khosla Ventures and Nat Friedman, former CEO of GitHub.
Other investors: RTP Global, Abstract VC, Basis Set Ventures, Elad Gil
Financing plan: The new funding will be used to bring in a "team of experts" to develop their own base model, rather than relying on open source systems like Stable Diffusion.