2.The AI Uprising: Key Startup Profiles Unveiled
2.The AI Uprising: Key Startup Profiles Unveiled
A look into 10 promising startups driving the future of genAI
Startups covered
Ada
Adept
AI21 Labs
Anthropic
Character.ai
Cohere
Cresta
DeepZen
Descript
Glean
ADA
Company Description
Ada is a technology company that provides an AI-based customer service automation platform. It offers a no-code automation builder that enables businesses to create service automation solutions to handle customer inquiries, support requests, and other interactions.
The platform utilizes Ada’s proprietary natural language understanding (NLU) to understand customer inquiries and provide relevant responses.
Headquarters: Canada
Sector: Cross-sector, E-commerce, FinTech, Telecom, Travel, Media, Gaming
Founded: 2016
Website: www.ada.cx
Total Funding: $190.7 million
Latest Funding: $130 million
Latest Series: Series C
Key Themes: Artificial Intelligence, Conversational platforms
Key Investors
ADA: key products
Recent Updates
December 2022: Ada announces that it is using OpenAI to enhance its conversational AI platform.
October 2022: Ada partnered with Omcom to provide customer support management for several marketplaces in Southeast Asia.
May 2021: Ada secured $130 million Series C funding with a valuation of $1.2 billion. The funding round was led by Spark Capital.
Adept
Company Description
Adept is a product lab and machine learning (ML) research company that builds general intelligence by enabling humans and computers to work together creatively.
The company’s product ACT-1 offers a framework to execute complex user requests across a variety of software tools. It can coordinate across multiple tools as necessary and provides a model for actions.
Headquarters: USA
Sector: Cross-sector
Founded: 2022
Website: www.adept.ai
Total Funding: $415 million
Latest Funding: $350 million
Latest Series: Series B
Key Themes: Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning
Key Investors
AI21 Labs: key products
Recent Updates
March 2023: Adept raised $350 million in Series B funding to launch its initial products and train models.
April 2022: Adept raised $65 million in Series A funding to develop and build general intelligence solutions.
August 2022: Adept utilized Oracle Cloud Infrastructure and NVIDIA technology to develop a universal AI teammate that can perform a range of tasks people execute on their computers or the internet.
AI21 Labs
Company Description
AI21 Labs is an AI lab and product company that focuses on developing natural language processing (NLP) technologies that can understand and generate human-like language, as well as machine learning algorithms that can analyze large datasets and make predictions.
Headquarters: Israel
Sector: Cross-sector, Retail
Founded: 2017
Website:www.ai21.com
Total Funding: $118.5 million
Latest Funding: $64 million
Latest Series: Series B
Key Themes: Artificial Intelligence
Key Investors
AI21 Labs: key products
Recent Updates
April 2023: AI21 Labs integrated generative AI capabilities into Google Docs to enhance the writing experience.
April 2023: AI21 Labs partners with Amazon’s Bedrock to create synergies for both companies in the genAI space.
March 2023: AI21 Labs announced the launch of task-specific APIs and Jurassic-2, a new large language model.
December 2022: AI21 Labs launched Wordtune for iOS, a personal editor
Anthropic
Company Description
Anthropic is an AI safety and research company that focuses to build reliable, interpretable, and steerable AI systems. Its research focuses on natural language, human feedback, scaling laws, reinforcement learning, code generation, and interpretability.
Anthropic's goal is to ensure that AI is developed in a manner that promotes the well-being and safety of humanity.
Headquarters: USA
Sector: Cross-sector, Customer service, Legal, L&D
Founded: 2021
Website: www.anthropic.com
Total Funding: $1.3 billion
Latest Funding: $300 million
Latest Series: Venture Round
Key Themes: Artificial Intelligence
Key Investors
Anthropic: key products
Recent Updates:
March 2023: Anthropic launched Claude, an AI chat assistant.
March 2023: Anthropic’s language models were used in DuckDuckGo’s recently launched AI-based search solution.
February 2023: Anthropic forges partnership with Google Cloud to help deliver reliable and responsible AI.
Character.ai
Company Description
Character.ai is a neural language model chatbot web application that can generate human-like text responses and participate in contextual conversation.
The company features imagination and brainstorming tools, language learning tools, and a wide range of other applications. Through its proprietary technology, Character.ai enables users to utilize dialogue agents.
Headquarters: USA
Sector: Cross-sector, Gaming
Founded: 2021
Website: www.character.ai
Total Funding: $150 million
Latest Funding: $150 million
Latest Series: Series A
Key Themes: Artificial Intelligence & Conversational platforms
Key Investors
Recent Updates
March 2023: Character.ai achieved unicorn status with a $150 million series funding.
February 2023: Ardmore-based engineer Doug Muth has announced that he has developed a Gritty chatbot through Character.ai.
Cohere
Company Description
Cohere is a machine learning platform that enables developers to build NLP applications. The platform provides a suite of tools for training and deploying models that can understand and generate human-like language.
The company’s technology is used in various industries, including finance, healthcare, and e-commerce, to develop chatbots, virtual assistants, and other NLP applications.
Headquarters: Canada
Sector: Cross-sector
Founded: 2019
Website: www.cohere.com
Total Funding: $164.9 million
Latest Funding: $35 million
Latest Series: Series D
Key Themes: Advanced Materials, Artificial Intelligence
Key Investors
Cohere: Key Products
Recent Updates
April 2023: Cohere has partnered with LivePerson to mold its large language models for enterprise use cases.
December 2022: Cohere launched a multilingual text understanding model that supports 100+ languages.
June 2022: Cohere partnered with Mila to accelerate the advancement of NLP research.
Cresta
Company Description
Cresta is an AI and ML-focused company that provides real-time guidance, coaching, and other similar solutions to customer service and sales agents, helping them improve their performance and provide better customer experiences.
Cresta’s platform also provides insights and trends based on customer conversation and a virtual agent to automate common customer interactions.Headquarters: USA
Sector: Cross-sector, Automotive, Retail, Telecom, Airline, Finance, Insurance
Founded: 2017
Website: www.cresta.com
Total Funding: $151 million
Latest Funding: $80 million
Latest Series: Series C
Key Themes: Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning
Key Investors
Cresta: key products
Recent Updates
March 2023: Cresta launches new solutions and improvements for its Cresta Real-Time Intelligence Platform.
November 2022: Cresta partners with Zoom and provides real-time voice integration for Zoom Contact Centre customers.
March 2022: Cresta closes $80 million series C funding round led by Tiger Global.
Deepzen
Company Description
DeepZen is a technology company focused on NLP and text-to-speech (TTS) solutions. It offers solutions to create realistic and expressive voices for various applications such as virtual assistants, audiobooks, and interactive voice response (IVR) systems.
The company partners with publishers, media houses, advertising agencies, and gaming companies to deliver AI-based voice solutions.
Headquarters: United Kingdom
Sector: Cross-sector, Advertising, Gaming, E-Learning, Publishing, Voiceover
Founded: 2017
Website: www.deepzen.io
Total Funding: $3.7 million
Latest Funding: $2.4 million
Latest Series: Seed Round
Key Themes: Artificial Intelligence, Natural Language Processing
Key Investors
DeepZen: key products
Recent Updates
April 2023: DeepZen leverages AI to recreate the voice of late actor Edward Herrmann, who passed away in 2014.
September 2022: DeepZen partners with Aflorithmic to deliver expressive voice solutions.
March 2020: DeepZen closes seed funding round, raising a total of $2.4 million.
January 2018: DeepZen raises $1.2 million in Pre-Seed from Angel Investors/HNIs.
Descript
Company Description
Descript is a web-based audio and video editing platform that allows users to record, edit, and transcribe their media files. It uses machine learning algorithms to generate accurate transcripts where users can edit the text directly within the platform.
Descript also offers collaboration tools, which allow multiple users to work on the same project simultaneously. Users can publish their finished projects directly to social media or various hosting platforms.
Headquarters: USA
Sector: Cross-sector, Publishing
Founded: 2017
Website: www.descript.com
Total Funding: $100 million
Latest Funding: $50 million
Latest Series: Series C
Key Themes: Artificial Intelligence, Digital Media
Key Investors
Descript: key products
Recent Updates
November 2022: Descript launched a new interface for its desktop application to simplify the intricate task of editing audio and video for non-expert content creators and enterprises.
August 2022: Descript announced an integration with Blubrry to speed up podcast publishing.
March 2022: Descript launched multi-language transcription to support the global user base.
September 2019: Descript acquired Lyrebird, a synthetic voice generation company
Glean
Company Description
Glean is a provider of search and knowledge discovery solutions to enterprises. It offers a search engine that allows and helps employees find any piece of data through a tool in any company.
Glean provides software to conduct searches through enterprise apps and content. It offers a purpose-based search for processes like hiring and assigning tasks.
Headquarters: USA
Sector: Cross-sector
Founded: 2019
Website: www.glean.com
Total Funding: $155 million
Latest Funding: $100 million
Latest Series: Series C
Key Themes: Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning
Key Investors
Glean: key products
Recent Updates
March 2023: Glean and Google Cloud partnered to unlock generative AI for enterprises through trusted knowledge models.
May 2022: Glean was named in Forbes AI 50 list of top artificial intelligence companies of 2022.
September 2021: Glean launched an intuitive work assistant to address the problems of knowledge workers.
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