Artificial Intelligence

xAI Raises $6 Billion At $24 Billion Valuation

By Amit Chowdhry ● May 27, 2024

xAI, a company founded by Elon Musk that builds artificial intelligence to accelerate human scientific discovery, announced it has raised $6 billion at a valuation of $24 billion. The Series B funding included participation from Valor Equity Partners, Vy Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital, Fidelity Management & Research Company, Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal and, Kingdom Holding, and others.

Steno: $46 Million Raised And ‘Transcript Genius’ Launched

By Amit Chowdhry ● May 27, 2024

Steno, a tech-enabled provider of legal support and court reporting services, announced that it launched a first-of-its-kind generative AI tool for transcript analysis called Transcript Genius. This tool transforms how attorneys interact with transcripts. Along with the unveiling of Transcript Genius, Steno also announced the completion of $46 million in additional capital.

Vercel: AI-Based Frontend Cloud Platform Company Raises $250 Million At $3.25 Billion Valuation

By Amit Chowdhry ● May 26, 2024

Vercel, a leading Frontend Cloud platform, announced that it has secured $250 million in Series E funding at a valuation of $3.25 billion. This funding round was spearheaded by existing investor Accel, with participation from other existing investors including CRV, GV, Notable Capital (previously GGV Capital), Bedrock, Geodesic Capital, Tiger Global, 8VC, and SV Angel.

Malted AI: Scotland-Based Company Secures £6 Million To Simplify Output Of Large Models

By Amit Chowdhry ● May 26, 2024

Malted AI, a Scotland-based AI firm helping enterprises to build smaller, more focused AI models with greater performance at a fraction of the cost, announced that it has secured £6 million in seed investment, led by Hoxton Ventures and joined by Creator Fund and angel investors.

Leya: $10.5 Million Raised To Transform Legal Work

By Amit Chowdhry ● May 26, 2024

Stockholm-based Leya has announced the successful closing of its $10.5 million seed funding round, which was led by Benchmark and participated in by Hummingbird, SV Angel, and Y Combinator.

c/side: $1.7 Million Raised To Secure Browsers Against Zero-Day Attacks

By Amit Chowdhry ● May 26, 2024

c/side, a cybersecurity company with tools for monitoring, optimizing, and securing vulnerable browser-side third-party scripts, has emerged from stealth with $1.7 million in funding. This pre-seed funding round was led by Scribble Ventures, with strategic individual investors including Roar Ventures, Kathy Korevec, Dan Scheinman, Jason Warner, Mike Taylor, Kevin Van Gundy, Zain Rizavi, Daniel Lopez, Dan Smith, and Nick Gianos.

Angel AI: $4.5 Million Secured To Provide Age-Appropriate Internet Experiences For Children

By Amit Chowdhry ● May 24, 2024

Angel AI, a parent-designed AI platform offering an age-appropriate internet experience for children aged 5 to 12 years old, announced it has raised a $4.75 million seed funding round led by Cortical Ventures with significant participation from Village Global and several other renowned angel investors.

Metropolis Technologies: AI-Based Checkout-Free Payment Company Raises $1.8 Billion

By Amit Chowdhry ● May 24, 2024

Metropolis Technologies, an AI-based company whose platform enables checkout-free payment experiences, announced that it has closed its acquisition of SP Plus Corporation (SP+). SP+ is the largest parking network and provider of mobility services for aviation, commercial, hospitality, and institutional clients in North America.

HydroX AI: Providing Comprehensive Security Measures In A $200+ Billion Market

By Amit Chowdhry ● May 24, 2024

HydroX AI is a company that is focused on providing comprehensive security measures, ensuring that your AI projects thrive in a secure and dynamic environment. Pulse 2.0 interviewed HydroX AI founder and CEO Zhuo Li to learn more about the company.

XConn: Accelerating Next-Gen Interconnect Technology For Lowering Energy Consumption

By Amit Chowdhry ● May 23, 2024

XConn Technologies is on a mission to accelerate composable memory innovation to lower the energy consumption and cost of next-generation AI processing. This will mean that data centers around the world can facilitate new AI workloads without draining our fragile global environment. To learn more about the company, Pulse 2.0 interviewed Krishna Mallampati, XConn’s Vice President of Sales and Marketing.

Expedera: Edge Inference AI Licensor Company Raises $20 Million

By Amit Chowdhry ● May 22, 2024

Expedera, a leading licensor of edge inference artificial intelligence (AI) semiconductor intellectual property (IP), announced it raised $20 million in Series B funding led by indie Semiconductor, with participation from prominent repeat and new industry investors. This funding, which includes converting a previous SAFE note, brought the company's total funding to more than $47 million.

WitnessAI: $27.5 Million Raised To Develop Safe Adoption Of Enterprise AI

By Amit Chowdhry ● May 22, 2024

WitnessAI, the creator of the first enablement platform for safe AI use, announced a $27.5 million Series A round, co-led by GV and Ballistic Ventures. The company had previously been incubated by Ballistic Ventures, beginning in 2023.

Highperformr: Social Media Platform Company Raises $3.5 Million

By Amit Chowdhry ● May 21, 2024

GenAI company Highperformr announced that it has secured $3.5 million in seed funding and launched its product Highperformr for Teams, which is a modern social media management platform designed to help B2B businesses maximize their return on investment (ROI) from social media efforts by amplifying their social presence and driving meaningful engagement.

Scale AI: Data Engine Company Raises $1 Billion At $13.8 Billion Valuation

By Amit Chowdhry ● May 21, 2024

AI data foundry company Scale AI announced it had closed a $1 billion financing transaction, bringing the company to a valuation of $13.8 billion. Existing investor Accel led the funding round with participation from returning investors, including Y Combinator, Nat Friedman, Index Ventures, Founders Fund, Coatue, Thrive Capital, Spark Capital, NVIDIA, Tiger Global Management, Greenoaks, and Wellington Management. The new investors include Cisco Investments, DFJ Growth, Intel Capital, ServiceNow Ventures, AMD Ventures, WCM, Amazon, Elad Gil, and Meta.

RestorePoint.ai: Enabling Customers To Extra Business Intelligence

By Amit Chowdhry ● May 21, 2024

RestorePoint.ai is a Secure Managed Data as a Service company with a goal of enabling midsize enterprises to punch above their weight by unlocking the full potential of their data with simplicity and security, and within budget. The RestorePoint.AI platform and Secure Managed Data Service enables customers to take advantage of new analytics and AI driven technologies and extract business intelligence from their data regardless of where it resides, while meeting security and governance requirements. Pulse 2.0 interviewed RestorePoint.AI founder and Chief Technology Officer (CTO) Abdul Altamimi to learn more about the company.

Sona: Frontline Workforce Management Company Raises $27.5 Million

By Amit Chowdhry ● May 21, 2024

Sona, a next-generation and intelligent workforce management platform for frontline enterprises founded by Steffen Wulff Petersen, Oli Johnson, and Ben Dixon, announced a $27.5 million Series A funding round. Felicis led the funding round with participation from Northzone, Gradient (Google's AI fund), SpeedInvest, Antler, BAG Ventures, and several notable angels participated in the round.

Triomics: Oncology Workflow Automation Company Raises $15 Million

By Amit Chowdhry ● May 20, 2024

Oncology staff usually search thousands of patient health records to find the right patient trials or care pathways. So, Triomics has raised $15 million to help cancer centers streamline these workflows and process oncology data at scale by applying its framework to build institution-tuned large language models (OncoLLM) and use case-specific software. The funding was raised from several Silicon Valley firms making pioneering investments in generative AI and healthcare, such as Lightspeed, Nexus Venture Partners, General Catalyst, and Y Combinator.

Plainsight Technologies: Offering Computer Vision For A Wide Variety Of Business Use Cases To Make Custom AI Models Easier

By Amit Chowdhry ● May 20, 2024

Plainsight Technologies provides computer vision for a wide variety of business use cases in the form of applications called Vision Intelligence Filters. Pulse 2.0 interviewed the newly appointed CEO, Kit Merker, to learn more about the company.

Fairgen: $8 Million Secured To Generate Accurate AI Responses To Surveys

By Amit Chowdhry ● May 20, 2024

Fairgen, a company generating accurate AI responses to surveys, announced it had raised $8 million to date in Seed funding, led by Maverick Ventures Israel, with participation from Tal Ventures, IGNIA, and Creator Fund to move consumer insights into the AI era. And the company is launching FairBoost, its flagship solution that doubles the size of under-sampled segments using predictive synthetic responses.

In-House Health: AI-Powered Nurse Scheduling Platform Secures $4 Million

By Amit Chowdhry ● May 18, 2024

In-House Health has formally launched its AI-driven scheduling and management platform for modern nursing teams. The company recently raised $4 million in seed funding, led by NEA and TMV, with participation from pre-seed investors Vine Ventures and Longevity Venture Partners. This brings the total investment to date to $5.4 million.

CoreWeave: $7.5 Billion Debt Financing Facility Signed

By Amit Chowdhry ● May 17, 2024

AI hyperscaler company CoreWeave announced it has signed a definitive agreement for a $7.5 billion debt financing facility led by funds managed by Blackstone, with strategic participation from Magnetar (Co-Lead Investor) and Coatue. The participation in the funding also included Carlyle, CDPQ, DigitalBridge Credit, funds and accounts managed by BlackRock, Eldridge Industries, and Great Elm Capital Corp. This new funding will be used to develop further CoreWeave's growing fleet of high-performance computing to execute existing contracts with leading enterprise customers and AI innovators.

Altera: $9 Million Secured To Build ‘Digital Human Beings’

By Amit Chowdhry ● May 17, 2024

Altera, a company pushing the boundaries of artificial intelligence (AI) by creating digital human beings, announced it has closed a $9 million seed round. This funding round brings the total to $11.1 million since the company was founded in December 2023. Patron and First Spark Ventures co-led the round, joining a renowned list of investors that includes a16z SPEEDRUN, gaming industry veteran and investor Mitch Lasky, co-founder of Valorant Stephen Lim, Supercell executive board member Greg Harper, Duolingo CBO Bob Meese, Vertex Pharma co-founder Rich Aldrich, Vamos Ventures, Alumni Ventures, and others.

Sigma: $200 Million Raised To Redefine Business Intelligence

By Amit Chowdhry ● May 17, 2024

Sigma, the cloud analytics solution built natively for cloud scale, announced it has raised $200 million in Series D funding to continue transforming BI through its innovations in AI infrastructure, data application development, enterprise-wide collaboration, and business user adoption.