OpenAI Rival AI21 Labs Raises 155M in Funding
While there are concerns around valuations and sheer dollar volume pouring into the sector, the current trend suggests continued investor interest in AI startups. The surge in AI startup funding is driven by the excitement around generative AI and LLMs, the costs of data curation, model training, and hosting. But it is fair to question the sustainability of the current trajectory, given there are open-source alternatives like Meta's LLaMa2.
Funding and Valuation
- AI21 Labs secured a $155 million Series C funding round.
- Notable investors include Walden Catalyst, Pitango, SCB10X, b2venture, Samsung Next, Google LLC, Nvidia Corp., and professor Amnon Shashua.
- This follows a $64 million Series B funding in July 2022.
- The company's total funding now stands at $283 million, with a valuation of $14 billion.
About AI21 Labs
- AI21 Labs operates as both a research lab and a commercial entity focusing on natural language processing (NLP).
- Co-CEOs are Yoav Shoham, a Stanford professor emeritus, and Amnon Shashua, founder of Mobileye NV. Ori Goshen, founder of CrowdX Ltd, is also a notable figure in the company.
- The company aims to make AI a "thought partner" to humans and has developed several NLP applications.
Key Products and Services
- AI21 Labs introduced Jurassic-2, touted as the world's most adaptable and advanced LLM.
- Jurassic-2 powers AI21 Studio, a platform for creating custom text-based applications.
- Other products include Wordtune, a multilingual AI assistant for reading and writing, and Wordtune Read for quick document summarization.
- AI21 Labs also developed the "Ask Ruth Bader Ginsburg" AI bot, trained on 27 years of the late judge's public communications.
Usage and Partnerships
- Jurassic-2 supports multiple languages and is used by companies like Latitude.io and Harambee.
- Latitude.io employs generative AI to expand its gaming worlds, while Harambee has a custom chatbot to boost program signups.
Competitive Landscape
- Constellation Research's Andy Thurai states that Jurassic-2 is more accurate than other custom LLMs and is cost-effective.
- AI21 Labs faces competition from OpenAI's ChatGPT, Anthropic, and Cohere Inc., among others.
- OpenAI recently received a $10 billion investment from Microsoft.
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