There’s still plenty of cash to go around in the generative AI space, apparently.
As first reported by Forbes, Inflection AI, an toptechtrends.com/2022/05/13/inflection-ai-led-by-linkedin-and-deepmind-co-founders-raises-225m-to-transform-computer-human-interactions/?guccounter=1″>AI startup aiming to create “personal AI for everyone,” has closed a $1.3 billion funding round led by Microsoft, Reid Hoffman, Bill Gates, Eric Schmidt and new investor Nvidia. A source familiar with the matter tells TechCrunch the tranche, which brings the company’s total raised to $1.525 million, values Inflection at $4 billion.
CEO Mustafa Suleyman, who previously co-founded the Google-owned AI lab DeepMind, says that the new capital will support Inflection’s work to build and design its first product, an AI-powered assistant called Pi.
“Personal AI is going to be the most transformational tool of our lifetimes. This is truly an inflection point,” Suleyman said in a canned statement. “We’re excited to collaborate with Nvidia, Microsoft, and CoreWeave as well as Eric, Bill and many others to bring this vision to life.”
Palo Alto, California-based Inflection, which has a small team of around 35 employees, has kept a relatively low profile to date, granting few interviews to the media. But in May, Inflection launched the aforementioned Pi, which is designed to provide knowledge based on a person’s interests and needs. Available to test via a messaging app or online, Pi’s intended to be a “kind” and “supportive” companion, Inflection says — offering “friendly” advice and info in a “natural, flowing” style.
Inflection’s personal AI assistant, which offers “friendly” advice.
Inflection recently peeled back the curtains on Inflection-1, the AI model powering Pi, asserting that it’s competitive or superior with other models in its tier — namely OpenAI’s toptechtrends.com/2022/12/01/while-anticipation-builds-for-gpt-4-openai-quietly-releases-gpt-3-5/”>GPT-3.5 and Google’s PaLM-540B. According to results the company, Inflection-1 indeed performs well on various measures, like middle- and high school-level exam tasks and “common sense” benchmarks. But it falls behind on coding, where GPT-3.5 beats it handily and, for comparison, OpenAI’s toptechtrends.com/tag/gpt-4/”>GPT-4 smokes the competition.
It has the cash to do so now, one would presume. With the closing of the latest tranche, Inflection sits behind OpenAI (which has raised $11.3 billion to date) as the best-funded generative AI startup — just edging out toptechtrends.com/2023/05/23/anthropic-raises-350m-to-build-next-gen-ai-assistants/”>Anthropic ($1.5 billion). Well behind it are toptechtrends.com/2023/06/08/ai-startup-cohere-now-valued-at-over-2-1b-raises-270m/”>Cohere ($445 million), toptechtrends.com/2023/03/15/adept-a-startup-training-ai-to-use-existing-software-and-apis-raises-350m/”>Adept ($415 million), toptechtrends.com/2023/04/25/ai-startup-runway-launches-app-to-bring-users-video-to-video-generative-ai/”>Runway ($195.5 million), Character.ai ($150 million) and toptechtrends.com/2022/10/17/stability-ai-the-startup-behind-stable-diffusion-raises-101m/”>Stability AI (~$100 million).
Despite the difficult macroeconomic environment, money’s still pouring into generative AI startups, indeed. According to Pitchbook, roughly $1.7 billion was generated across 46 deals in Q1 2023, with an additional $10.68 billion worth of deals announced sometime in the quarter but not yet completed.
toptechtrends.com/2023/06/29/inflection-ai-lands-1-3b-investment-to-build-more-personal-ai/”>Inflection lands $1.3B investment to build more ‘personal’ AI by toptechtrends.com/author/kyle-wiggers/”>Kyle Wiggers originally published on toptechtrends.com/”>TechCrunch
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