The current startup landscape has witnessed a notable increase in the number of companies leveraging artificial intelligence (AI). Out of the ten unicorns that have emerged this year, six are AI-based startups. This trend has caused a significant stir in the industry, with existing AI startups also experiencing a notable surge in valuation.
These developments underscore the importance of AI in the current business environment and suggest that it will continue to play a critical role in shaping the future of the industry.
In this collaboration, there are top 14 corporate companies: Nvidia/nVentures, Google/GV, SVA, Salesforce Ventures, Coatue, A.Capital, Microsoft/12, Y Combinator, Samsung NEXT, Madrona, Lux Capital, General Catalyst, b2venture, and Andreessen Horowitz that have invested in multiple AI startups. Top individuals such as Nat Friedman, Howie Liu, and Amjad Masad have also put in their money into multiple AI startups.
Here are the top 6 AI unicorns and their investors:
Nvidia/nVentures
Nvidia, a company that recently achieved a market capitalisation of $1 trillion, has invested in Databricks’ Series I funding round, which raised over $500 million. This funding round has valued Databricks at $43 billion. Nvidia has emerged as a leading investor in AI-related startups, having participated in 11 funding deals in the current third quarter and eight in Q2, according to data from Crunchbase.
Nvidia made investments in companies such as Enfabrica, Imbue (injecting $200 million), AI21 Labs (with a $155 million investment), and $200 million in Hugging Face. In 2023, Adept AI secured $350 million, Cohere raised $270 million, and Skydio received $230 million in funding.
Google/GV
In 2023, Google/GV invested $2 billion in AI startup Anthropic, adding to its $550 million funding from earlier this year. GV is a venture capital firm that supports innovative founders, with Alphabet as its sole limited partner. GV’s operating partners help startups with design, equity, diversity & inclusion, talent, and engineering. GV also provides startups with unique access to Google’s technology and talent. Additionally, Google/GV has made significant investments in AI-based startups such as AI21 Labs, Runway, Synthesia, and Typeface.
AI21 Labs raised $208M in a Series C funding round, Synthesia raised $90M, Runway raised $141M, and Typeface raised $65M in funding. These AI-based companies plan to use the funds to expand their teams, invest in AI research, and develop new technologies for content creation, video generation, and film editing.
SV Angel
SVA has been helping build some of the most transformative companies in AI globally. That success is a result of their belief in unlocking the potential in everyone they work with. In 2023 SVA announced investment in Adept AI, Character AI, and Replit, these companies raised total funding of more than $2.6M over 2 rounds.
Microsoft/M12
In 2019, Microsoft made a significant commitment to OpenAI with its first billion-dollar investment. This was followed by a $10 billion investment in January 2023, after the launch of GPT 3.5. In total, Microsoft has committed $13 billion to OpenAI.
Microsoft has made other significant investments in the AI space, including Inflection AI, Adept AI, Builder.ai and Typeface AI in 2023. The software giant’s stock price has risen more than 50% this year, largely due to the value AI brings to the tech ecosystem.
According to Microsoft CFO Amy Hood, the company’s partnership with OpenAI and others in this sector will add $10 billion in revenue to Microsoft. However, she did not specify the time frame for this.
Samsung NEXT
MosaicML, an LLM infrastructure provider, has recently been acquired for a whopping $1.5 billion. Before the acquisition, the company had raised almost $64 million from investors such as DCVC, AME Cloud Ventures, Lux, Frontline, Atlas, Playground Global, and Samsung Next. Interestingly, the company’s last valuation during its investor round was only $222 million, which means that it has increased by six times with this acquisition. This price highlights the current frothy state of the AI market and the high demand for talent and technology in this field.
AI21 Lab has recently secured $155 million in Series-C funding from investors including Samsung Next, Google, and NVIDIA. With this new funding round, the company has raised a total of $283 million at a valuation of $1.4 billion, further solidifying AI21 Labs’ position as a leader among generative AI unicorns.
Over the next three years, Samsung plans to invest more than $7 billion annually in the research and development of 5G, AI, and the Internet of Things (IoT). The Group is also doing so to encourage other companies to take action.
Lux Capital
Lux Capital, a venture capital firm with offices in New York City and Menlo Park, California, has raised $1.15 billion to invest in startups that focus on science and deep technologies such as AI, robotics, and biotechnology. The firm’s largest fund to date, Lux Ventures VIII or Lux 8, will finance investments in early-stage companies. With this raise, the firm’s total assets under management now exceed $5 billion.
MosaicML and Runway Two are the major investments that have been made by Lux Capital. Runway AI, an AI-powered editing software provider, has successfully raised a total of $46 million in funding. MosaicML has successfully secured $37 million in funding, propelling the company’s valuation to an impressive $1.3 billion.
