Where are AI Investments Going in 2024?
Because AI continues to be a hotbed for innovation, it’s no wonder that investment in the field has exploded in recent years. So far, this year, it is no different. Several major players are making significant investments in AI hoping to capitalize on its potential to drive change that could reshape the landscape in several industries. So let’s take a look into some of the biggest AI investments we’ve seen in 2024 so far, and maybe, we’ll be able to guess who may be able to catch lighting in a bottle.
Public Companies Leading the Charge in AI Investments
Meta
Meta’s founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg is aiming high and invested $10 billion this year into computing infrastructure. According to the tech leader, the aim is the holy grail of AI, artificial general intelligence. This shift by Meta comes as the company is training its latest Llama model that will help bring generative AI across Meta’s family of products.
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Microsoft
Microsoft is investing over $2 billion into French startup Mistral in order to expand past their investment into OpenAI and open “new commercial opportunities” into global markets. The deal will see Mistral’s technology becoming available on the company’s Azure cloud service while also shifting focus to multi-lingual technology.
Robotics
Amazon, Microsoft, OpenAI, and Nvidia have teamed up to back a startup that aims at developing human-like robots. If successful, we may see a future where the film iRobot may become a reality with a combined investment between all parties of over $645 million. According to the sources, AI’s major players are hoping that Figure AI Inc.’s engineers will be successful in integrating AI software with hardware that allows for human-like robotic technology. If made possible, it could revolutionize labor and become yet another major disruptor in most industries.
OpenAI and Chip Dream
The AI firm’s CEO, Sam Altman is hoping to turn the semiconductor industry on its head by raising as much as $7 trillion for Chip Dream. The project’s aim is to tackle issues related to chip-building capacity as current limitations are harming OpenAI’s growth, which in turn likely is harming other AI firms. In a post on X, Altman said, “The world needs more AI infrastructure–fab capacity, energy, datacenters, etc–than people are currently planning to build…building massive-scale AI infrastructure, and a resilient supply chain, is crucial to economic competitiveness.”
xAI
Elon Musk has secured $ 500 million in his own AI start-up called xAI. Currently, the Tesla founder’s new AI venture is discussing a valuation between $15 to $20 billion. The tech billionaire’s goal seems to be greater AI integration on the X social media platform and other use cases. So far, Grok is xAI’s first chatbot that is able to answer questions using more recent data as compared to ChatGPT, or Google’s Gemini.
Articul8
Intel joined forces with investment company Digital Bridge to create a new spin-off named Articul8. According to the company, Articul8 will offer a full-stack generative AI software platform that uses AI to keep customer data, training, and inference within an enterprise security perimeter. It will also allow customers their choice of cloud, on-premises, or hybrid deployments. Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger said: “With its deep AI and HPC domain knowledge and enterprise-grade genAI deployments, Articul8 is well positioned to deliver tangible business outcomes for Intel and our broader ecosystem of customers and partners.”
ElevenLabs
Former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman and entrepreneur Daniel Gross raised over $80M in a funding round for the startup, ElevenLabs. This firm aims to develop AI-powered audio tools that create synthetic voices. Founded in 2022, ElvenLabs is focused on natural speech synthesis and tools that allow for the design of natural-sounding AI voices in various languages and even accents. Currently, the company is valued at $1.1 Billion.
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What’s next?
Some amazing stuff right? Well if you want to get into the midst of AI funding and investments, you need to mingle with those who are making the deals. And the best place to start networking is ODSC East this April 23–25.
At East, you’ll meet, learn from, and develop relationships with fellow data professionals, leading experts, and founders who are reshaping the world with AI.
Originally posted on OpenDataScience.com
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