Artificial Intelligence (AI) and large language models (LLMs) company AI21 Labs has announced raising $155 million in Series C funding to fast-track the expansion of its “highly precised” text-based generative AI services for businesses.
The Tel Aviv, Israel-based company said the funding round was backed by investors including Walden Catalyst, Pitango, SCB10X, b2venture, Samsung Next, and Prof. Amnon Shashua, as well as tech giants Google and NVIDIA.
This infusion of the fresh capital raises the total funds secured by the company to $283 million and its valuation to $1.4 billion.
Established in 2017 by Amnon Shasuha, Yoav Shoham, and Ori Goshen, AI21 Labs was one of the first to bring generative AI to the masses. With a surge in demand, the company has garnered a robust clientele, ranging from individual consumers to Fortune 100 corporations.
AI21 Labs said it focuses not just on models but also constructs AI systems that are simple to integrate, producing reliable, trustworthy, and accurate outcomes with finer control than any existing standalone model.
Its proprietary Jurassic-2 foundation models, which it claims rank among the world’s largest and most sophisticated LLMs, power AI21 Studio and Wordtune, platforms for developing custom text-based business applications and a multilingual reading and writing AI assistant, respectively.
Chairman Amnon Shashua said:
AI21 Labs is a pure play in AI as it develops and owns foundation models which are served as a platform to developers and enterprises, while developing derivatives, such as Wordtune, directly to end users. The current round fuels the growth of the company to reach its goal of developing the next-level of AI with the capabilities of reasoning across many domains. We believe that the impact of AI21 Labs growth plans would be of a global scale and quite soon.
The co-CEOs, Yoav Shoham and Ori Goshen, expressed their gratitude for the confidence shown by both existing and new investors. They highlighted that AI21 Labs’ state-of-the-art technology, which includes leading large language models and neurosymbolic technology, offers the robustness, predictability, and explainability necessary in the era of AI-first enterprises.
This latest funding follows AI21’s recent efforts to bring generative AI to enterprises and professionals, including partnerships with market leaders such as Carrefour, Clarivate, eBay, Guesty, Monday.com, and Ubisoft. The company also earned a spot on the inaugural CB Insights GenAI 50 List of Most Innovative Generative AI Startups.
