4.The AI Uprising: Key Startup Profiles Unveiled
A look into 10 promising startups driving the future of GenAI
Introduction
This blog marks the conclusion of our report series, where we delve into the world of startups that are playing a crucial role in democratizing generative AI. Although there has been a significant focus on applications resembling ChatGPT, it's important to recognize that generative AI technologies have a much broader scope.
In Part 1 of our blog series, we explore the emergence of GenAI, its prominent applications, and the startups operating within each application area.
Moving on to Part 2, we provide concise profiles of ten innovative startups: Ada, Adept, AI21 Labs, Anthropic, Character.ai, Cohere, Cresta, DeepZen, Descript, and Glean. Each startup is accompanied by a general description, details about its founding team, notable investors, strategic partnerships, customers, key products, and the latest updates.
Part 3 takes a deep dive into Grammarly, Harvey AI, Hazy, Hugging Face, Insilico Medicine, Jasper, Mostly AI, Murf AI, Mutiny, Neurala, and Open AI.
In our fourth blog, we will be covering:
Poly AI
Company Description
PolyAI Ltd is a startup that specializes in conversational AI technology. Their platform leverages NLP and ML algorithms to provide personalized and accurate responses to customer inquiries.
The company's goal is to make communication more efficient for individuals and businesses.
Headquarters: United Kingdom
Sector: Banking, Hospitality, Retail, Telecom, Insurance, Healthcare, Airlines, Travel
Founded: 2017
Website: www.poly-ai.com
Total Funding: $66 million
Latest Funding: $40 million
Latest Series: Series B
Key Themes: Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning
Key Investors
PolyAI: key products
Latest Updates:
September 2022: PolyAI closed Georgian-led Series B funding round, it raised $40 million.
February 2022: PolyAI opens a new US R&D facility and appoints a new SVP for marketing.
September 2021: PolyAI raised $14 million in venture funding.
March 2019: PolyAI raised $12 million in a series A round of funding led by Point72 Ventures.
Replit
Company Description
Replit is a cloud-based integrated development environment (IDE) that allows users to code, collaborate, and deploy applications in a browser-based environment.
In addition to its core IDE product, Replit offers various features and tools for developers, including Replit Teams, Replit for Education, Replit DB, and Replit Talk.
Headquarters: USA
Sector: IT
Founded: 2016
Website: www.replit.com
Total Funding: $104.6 million
Latest Funding: $80 million
Latest Series: Series B
Key Themes: Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning
Key Investors
Replit: key products
Latest Updates
March 2023: Replit and Google Cloud have partnered to advance generative AI for software development.
September 2022: Replit invested $4.3 million in Zeet, a developer-focused application platform.
December 2021: Replit raised $80 million in Series B funding. The startup is looking to create a global computing platform for learning, building, and launching code-based products.
Runaway
Company Description
Runway is a developer of online creativity tools for content creation and video editing. It offers a toolkit that adds artificial intelligence capabilities to design and creative platforms.
The company provides integration with other applications and data training functions used for motion capture, image synthesis, and object recognition. Runway focuses on video automation and synthetic media to reduce the costs of creating visual media across industries.
Headquarters: USA
Sector: Cross-sector
Founded: 2018
Website: www.runwayml.com
Total Funding: $95.5 million
Latest Funding: $50 million
Latest Series: Series C
Key Themes: Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning
Key Investors
Runway: key products
Latest Updates
March 2023: Runway launched Gen-2, which is an artificial intelligence model that can generate brief video clips based on text prompts
March 2023: Runway has co-created the Stable Diffusion AI image generator, an AI model that takes any text and generates three seconds of matching video footage
December 2022: Runway raised $50 million in Series C Funding to build the next generation of creative tools
Stability AI
Company Description
Stability AI is an AI-driven visual art company that designs and implements an open AI tool to develop images based on text input.
The company offers solutions that harness the power of collective intelligence and augmented technology. It focuses on developing advanced open AI models for a range of fields including image, language, audio, video, 3D, and biology.
Headquarters: United Kingdom
Sector: Cross-sector
Founded: 2019
Website: www.stability.ai
Total Funding: $89 million
Latest Funding: $89 million
Latest Series: Seed
Key Themes: Artificial Intelligence
Key Investors
Stability AI: key products
Latest Updates
March 2023: Stability AI and Revel.xyz launched Animai, a consumer animation tool powered by Stability AI’s animation technology.
March 2023: Stability AI acquired Init ML, developers of the Clipdrop application. The deal helps Stability AI’s drive to build applications using its open-source generative AI models.
February 2023: Stability AI launched a new medical AI research organization MedARC that focuses on the development of foundation models for medical AI research.
Synthesia
Company Description
Synthesia offers a range of video generation and personalization solutions using generative AI. Their products are designed to help businesses and individuals create engaging and personalized video content at scale, without the need for expensive equipment or specialized skills.
Headquarters: United Kingdom
Sector: Cross-sector, Marketing, Advertising, L&D
Founded: 2017
Website: www.synthesia.io
Total Funding: $66.5 million
Latest Funding: $50 million
Latest Series: Series B
Key Themes: Artificial Intelligence & Conversational platforms
Key Investors
Synthesia: key products
Latest Updates
December 2021: Synthesia raised $50 million to leverage synthetic avatars for corporate training
April 2021: Synthesia secured $12.5 million Series A to expand its workforce
February 2020: Reuters and Synthesia unveiled an AI prototype for automated video reports
Tonic
Company Description
Tonic is a data transformation company that utilizes synthetic data, differential privacy, and distributed computing techniques. It aims to provide secure and accessible data to its customers, partners, and comply with the law.
The company’s platform preserves various characteristics of a dataset such as constraints, statistical correlations, distributions, and interdependencies while allowing convenient access to data without violating customer trust or organizational policies.
Headquarters: USA
Sector: Cross-sector, Finance, Healthcare, Retail, Insurance
Founded: 2018
Website: www.tonic.ai
Total Funding: $45 million
Latest Funding: $35 million
Latest Series: Series B
Key Themes: Artificial Intelligence
Key Investors
Tonic: key products
Latest Updates
June 2022: Tonic announced an integration with Snowflake, which enables both Tonic and Snowflake customers to build applications in the Snowflake Data Cloud with de-identified data.
April 2022: Tonic raised $5 million to build an open-source order book DEX on the NEAR Protocol.
September 2021: Tonic raised $35 million in Series B funding to improve developer relations, and increase customer acquisition and retention.
Typeface
Company Description
Typeface is a technology company that utilizes generative AI to help enterprises create personalized content.
The startup enables enterprises to integrate their brand’s unique voice and style with its generative AI application to quickly create content at a scale. It offers extension and customization of workflows.
Headquarters: USA
Sector: Cross-sector
Founded: 2022
Website: www.typeface.ai
Total Funding: $65 million
Latest Funding: $65 million
Latest Series: Series A
Key Themes: Artificial Intelligence
Key Investors
Typeface: key products
Latest Updates
February 2023: Typeface raised $65 million in Series A funding. Top investors included Lightspeed Venture Partners, GV (Google Ventures), M12 (Microsoft's Venture fund), and Menlo Ventures.
Viz.ai
Company Description
Viz.ai is a healthcare technology company that specializes in AI and deep learning to provide advanced stroke detection and treatment solutions. Its software reduces treatment time, enhances care access, and speeds up medical innovation adoption.
The company's product, Viz LVO, utilizes advanced deep learning technology to transmit critical information regarding stroke patients directly to a specialist, who can then promptly intervene and provide treatment.
Headquarters: USA
Sector: Healthcare
Founded: 2016
Website: www.viz.ai
Total Funding: $291.6 million
Latest Funding: $40 million
Latest Series: Venture Round
Key Themes: Healthtech
Key Investors
Viz.ai: key products
Latest Updates
March 2023: Viz.ai announced plans to use an AI-powered platform for subject enrollment in the PE-TRACT trial.
January 2023: Viz.ai launched Viz Vascular Suite, an AI software to detect and prioritize care for pulmonary embolism, heart strain, aortic dissection, and abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA).
November 2022: Viz.ai launched Viz Radiology Suite, an AI-powered suite that alerts radiologists in their workflow of suspected diseases, prioritizes work lists, and connects care teams in real-time.
WellSaid Labs
Company Description
WellSaid Labs is a technology company that specializes in synthetic voice creation. The startup employs deep learning techniques to produce customized voices.
Their platform enables users to generate personalized and engaging voice experiences across various sectors, such as e-learning, customer service, and entertainment. The startup also provides the option to build avatars in the user’s voice for branded content.
Headquarters: USA
Sector: Cross-sector, Marketing, Advertising, L&D, Publishing
Founded: 20168
Website: www.wellsaidlabs.com
Total Funding: $10 million
Latest Funding: $10 million
Latest Series: Series A
Key Themes: Artificial Intelligence
Key Investors
WellSaid Labs: key products
Latest Updates
March 2023: WellSaid Labs announced that they are now SOC 2 Type 1 complaint and will provide an additional level of security documentation for its customers.
September 2022: WellSaid Labs released four new voice avatars with new accents, styles, and customization.
March 2022: WellSaid Labs partnered with ZeroSumAI to provide custom voiceover with API support to the Auto-Stream product.
Startups have just begun to scratch the surface, greater innovation and new value creation would enable them to shape the future of genAI.