OpenAI rival banks $155m from Google, others at $1.4b valuation

Ori Goshen, co-founder and co-CEO of AI21 Labs / Photo credit: AI21 Labs

Enterprise offerings are gathering steam in the generative AI industry. OpenAI, for one, recently launched an enterprise-grade version of its ChatGPT service.

Google does the same through its AI development platform, Vertex AI, as well as Google Cloud, which works with companies like Snorkel AI and Contextual AI. Google has also invested in AI21 Labs, an OpenAI competitor based out of Israel.

AI21 Labs builds AI systems for natural language. It has raised US$155 million in a series C round, which pegged the startup’s valuation at US$1.4 billion.

Aside from Google, investors in the round include Nvidia, Samsung Next, and SCB10X.

AI21 Labs plans to use the funds to grow its text-based generative AI services for enterprises and to expand globally.

Funding details

• Funding amount: US$155 million
• Other investors: Walden Catalyst Ventures, Pitango Venture Capital, SCB10X, b2venture, Samsung Next, Google Inc., NVIDIA
• Stage: Series C
• Valuation: US$1.4 billion
• Source

AI21 Labs’ main product is AI21 Studio, a platform for developers to create custom text-based business applications powered by Jurassic-2, its large language model.

Currently, AI21 Studio works with Harambee (a platform for governmental bodies in South Africa that help young talent land jobs) to power its chatbot. It also helps Latitude, an AI gaming firm, deepen the player experience for its text-based adventure game, AI Dungeon.

Additionally, AI21 Labs also offers Wordtune, a reading and writing AI assistant that works in several languages.

To date, the company’s other customers include Carrefour, Clarivate, eBay, Guesty, Monday.com, and Ubisoft.

See also: Are genAI and China coming for India’s SaaS crown?

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