Venture funding for tech companies has been on the decline lately, but recent news reports indicate investors are eager to support companies in the red-hot generative AI space.
Stability AI, the developer of text-to-image generator Stable Diffusion, is reportedly talking to investors again after raising $101 million in seed funding in October. The company, which was previously valued at $1 billion, is seeking a $4 billion valuation this go-around, according to Bloomberg.
Inflection, a generative AI startup co-founded by DeepMind co-founder Mustafa Suleyman and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, is reportedly seeking up to $675 million from investors, according to the Financial Times.
While these two companies are keeping their discussions under wraps, at least five other generative AI companies have raised funds for growth so far this year.
OpenAI landed $10B. OpenAI has taken the tech world by storm. Its text-to-image generator DALL-E 2 captured the internet’s imagination last year, but the launch of its conversational AI platform ChatGPT last year turned the company into a household name. OpenAI received $1 billion from Microsoft in 2019, and in January, the software giant gave OpenAI another $10 billion, according to Bloomberg. OpenAI is also developing a language model to power a new version of Microsoft’s Bing search engine and Edge web browser.
Anthropic scored $300M. Founded in 2021 by former OpenAI employees, Anthropic aims to differentiate itself from generative AI technologies that are “unpredictable, unreliable and opaque” by building “reliable, interpretable and steerable AI systems,” according to its website. The company’s chatbot, named Claude, is being tested in closed beta and is not yet available to the public. According to a recent report in the Financial Times, Anthropic recently received $300 million in funding from Google. Anthropic named Google its preferred cloud provider.
Character.ai raked in at least $200M. Character.ai was founded in 2021 by two former Google engineers who previously worked on the tech giant’s conversational model LaMDA. Character.ai has developed chatbots that can speak in the style of Tesla CEO Elon Musk or Mario from Nintendo’s Super Mario video games. The platform also has a librarian that can give book recommendations, a trip planner that offers travel advice and a bot that can help users make a difficult decisions. The Financial Times reported last week that Character.ai recently raised between $200 million and $250 million at a valuation of about $1 billion.
Typeface bagged $65M. Built for the marketing world, Typeface is a generative AI tool that allows brands to easily create images, blogs and social media posts. The generated content can be personalized for each brand’s voice, principles and audience demographics. The company emerged from stealth in late February with $65 million in funding. Typeface also offers security and compliance features that large companies expect from an enterprise-grade platform, according to the company.
Tome gained $43M. Tome’s AI-powered storytelling platform allows users to quickly generate text, designs or entire narratives for pitch decks, product launch plans or school presentations. Users can also generate images through an integration with DALL-E 2. Tome raised a $43 million Series B funding round in February.
