AI Start-up AI21 Labs Valued At $1.4bn After Fresh Funding

AI21 Labs co-founder Amnon Shashua. Image: Ryan Lash/TED (CC BY-NC 2.0)

Backed by the likes of Google and Nvidia, Tel Aviv-based AI21 Labs raised $155m in a Series C round to meet growing demand for AI.

Israeli start-up AI21 Labs has raised $155m to invest in its text-based Generative AI services for enterprises.

The Series C funding round was backed by Google and Nvidia and brings the company's total capital raised to $283m with a valuation of $1.4bn.

While AI21 Labs has the backing of the aforementioned tech giants, funding for the latest round was led by Walden Catalyst, Pitango, SCB10X, b2venture, Samsung Next and co-founder Amnon Shashua, who previously founded Intel's self-driving car unit Mobileye.

Shashua founded AI21 Labs in 2017 along with fellow Israeli tech entrepreneurs Yoav Shoham and Ori Goshen as one of the first start-ups brining generative AI to the masses.

Headquartered in Tel Aviv, AI21 Labs builds advanced large language models (LLM) and natural language processing (NLP) technologies to meet growing demand for generative AI applications from enterprise consumers including Fortune 100 companies such as Amazon.

Its proprietary Jurassic-2 foundation model powers AI21 Studio, the company's flagship developer platform for building custom text-based business applications. It also develops Wordtune, a multilingual reading and writing assistant much like Grammarly.

"AI21 Labs is a pure play in AI as it develops and owns foundation models which are served as a platform to developers and enterprises, while developing derivatives, such as Wordtune, directly to end users," said Shashua, who is also the company's chair.

"The current round fuels the growth of the company to reach its goal of developing the next level of AI with the capabilities of reasoning across many domains. We believe that the impact of AI21 Labs growth plans would be of a global scale and quite soon."

Shoham and Goshen, who lead AI21 Labs as co-CEOs, said that the company's technology provides the "robustness, predictability and explainability required" by enterprises looking to make the most out of AI.

"The innovative work by the AI21 Labs team will help enterprises accelerate productivity and efficiency with generative AI-based systems that are accurate, trustworthy and reliable," added Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang, whose company has seen a surge in AI-driven sales.

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Co-founder and chair of AI21 Labs Amnon Shashua. Image: Ryan Lash/TED (CC BY-NC 2.0)

ChatGPT, NLP And TensorFlow Top List Of In-demand Generative AI Skills

Earlier in the year, companies primarily sought generative AI-powered tools, according to Upwork data. Organizations are now looking for AI-infused applications and services, a change partially credited to higher C-suite awareness of the technology, according to the report.  

Enterprises are taking a multistep approach to generative AI, covering everything from ensuring legal compliance to increasing investments and making sure the right talent is in place. 

But finding the right skills isn't easy, which is why businesses are looking at talent holistically through hiring, upskilling and acquisition. 

"The search terms companies are using and what they will hire for are evolving to be more sophisticated, and we think we'll continue to see that understanding deepen over time," Kelly Monahan, managing director at Upwork Research Institute said in the blog post. 

C-suite leaders cite workforce reskilling as one of the major organizational challenges to generative AI adoption, according to an IBM survey of 3,000 C-suite leaders and 21,000 workers published earlier this month. 

Large enterprises with the breadth and depth to support generative AI workloads are embarking on initial waves of introducing the tech to employees, and many have tied workforce strategies to product launches and investment plans. 

McKinsey is upskilling employees in prompt engineering and content validation as its internal generative AI platform rolls out to the entire firm by this fall. Accenture said it would be doubling its AI talent through hiring, acquisitions and training in June.

Israeli Generative AI Co AI21 Labs Raises $155m At $1.4b Valuation

Israeli generative AI company AI21 Labs has announced the closing of $155 million Series C financing round at a company valuation of $1.4 billion. Investors include Walden Catalyst, Pitango, SCB10X, b2venture, Samsung Next and Prof. Amnon Shashua with participation from Google and Nvidia. The new funding brings the total amount raised by AI21 Labs to $283 million.

The Tel Aviv-based AI and large language models (LLMs) developer will use the new funds to accelerate the growth of its highly accurate text-based generative AI services for enterprises.

Founded in 2017 by chairman Prof. Amnon Shasuha, and co-CEOs Prof. Yoav Shoham, and Ori Goshen, AI21 Labs has been one of the pioneers of generative AI to the masses. In meeting growing demand, the company has built a strong customer base serving consumers to Fortune 100 companies with the power of its advanced LLM and natural language (NLP) technologies through easy-to-use applications and APIs.

AI21 has built AI systems that are easy to integrate and that generate reliable, trustworthy, and accurate results with more refined control than any standalone existing model. The company's proprietary Jurassic-2 foundation models are some of the world's largest and most sophisticated LLMs. Jurassic-2 powers AI21 Studio, a developer platform for building custom text-based business applications off of AI21's language models; and Wordtune, a multilingual reading and writing AI assistant for professionals and consumers.

Shashua said, "AI21 Labs is a pure play in AI as it develops and owns foundation models which are served as a platform to developers and enterprises, while developing derivatives, such as Wordtune, directly to end users. The current round fuels the growth of the company to reach its goal of developing the next-level of AI with the capabilities of reasoning across many domains. We believe that the impact of AI21 Labs growth plans would be of a global scale and quite soon."

Prof. Yoav Shoham and Ori Goshen added, "AI21 Labs' cutting edge technology, including leading large language models and neurosymbolic technology, provides the robustness, predictability and explainability required in the era of AI-first enterprises. We look forward to continuing this journey with our investors, partners and customers".

"Generative AI is driving a new era of computing across every industry," said Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA. "The innovative work by the AI21 Labs team will help enterprises accelerate productivity and efficiency with generative AI-based systems that are accurate, trustworthy, and reliable."

The new funding follows AI21's progress in bringing generative AI to enterprises and professionals. This includes collaborations with market-leading customers in diverse sectors, among them Carrefour, Clarivate, eBay, Guesty, Monday.Com and Ubisoft.

Goldman Sachs served as sole financial advisor to AI21 in this round.

Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.Globes.Co.Il - on August 31, 2023.

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