Top 6 AI Investors of 2023
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In the current startup landscape, the number of companies leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) has significantly increased. Among the ten unicorn companies emerging this year, six are AI-based startups. This trend has caused a major stir in the industry, with existing AI startups experiencing significant valuation surges.
These developments highlight the importance of AI in today's business environment and indicate that it will continue to play a pivotal role in shaping the future of industries. Below are the top 6 AI unicorns and their investors:
1. Nvidia/nVentures
Nvidia, which recently became a trillion-dollar market cap company, participated in Databricks' Series I funding round, raising over $500 million and valuing Databricks at $43 billion. Nvidia engaged in 11 financing deals in Q3 and 8 in Q2, establishing itself as a leading investor in AI-related startups. The company has invested in Enfabrica, Imbue ($200 million investment), AI21Labs ($155 million investment), and Hugging Face ($200 million investment). In 2023, Adept AI raised $350 million, Cohere secured $270 million, and Skydio raised $230 million.
2. Google/GV
In 2023, Google/GV invested $2 billion in AI startup Anthropic, adding to the $550 million funding earlier in the year. GV is a venture capital firm that supports innovative founders, with Alphabet as its sole limited partner. GV's operating partners provide assistance to startups in areas such as design, equity, diversity and inclusion, talent, and engineering. Furthermore, Google/GV has made significant investments in AI startups like AI21Labs, Runway, Synthesia, and Typeface. AI21Labs raised $208 million in a Series C funding round, Synthesia secured $90 million, Runway raised $141 million, and Typeface garnered $65 million. These AI 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.
3. SV Angel
SVA has been committed to assisting some of the most transformative AI companies globally. In 2023, SVA announced investments in Adept AI, Character AI, and Replit. These companies collectively raised over $2.6 million across two funding rounds.
4. Microsoft/M12
In 2019, Microsoft made its first major investment of $1 billion in OpenAI, followed by a $10 billion investment after the launch of GPT-3.5 in January 2023, totaling a commitment of $13 billion. Throughout 2023, Microsoft also made other significant investments in the AI field, including Inflection AI, Adept AI, Builder.ai, and Typeface AI. Due to the value AI brings to the technological ecosystem, Microsoft's stock price surged by over 50% this year. According to Amy Hood, Microsoft's CFO, collaborations with OpenAI and other companies in this sector are projected to generate an additional $10 billion in revenue for Microsoft in the future, though no specific timeline was provided.
5. Samsung NEXT
LLM infrastructure provider MosaicML was recently acquired for $1.5 billion. Prior to the acquisition, the company had raised nearly $64 million from investors including DCVC, AME Cloud Ventures, Lux, Frontline, Atlas, Playground Global, and Samsung Next. Notably, the company's valuation in its funding rounds was only $222 million, meaning it grew sixfold in this acquisition. This price highlights the current boom in the AI market and the high demand for talent and technology in this field.
AI21Lab recently raised $155 million in a Series C funding round with investors including Samsung Next, Google, and NVIDIA. Through this new funding round, the company has raised a total of $283 million, with a valuation of $1.4 billion, further solidifying AI21Labs' leadership position as a generative AI unicorn. Over the next three years, Samsung plans to invest over $7 billion annually in 5G, AI, and IoT R&D while encouraging other companies to take action.
6. 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 science and deep tech fields such as AI, robotics, and biotechnology. In its largest fund to date, Lux Ventures VIII or Lux8, the firm's total assets under management now exceed $5 billion.
MosaicML and Runway Two are among Lux Capital's key investment projects. AI-powered editing software provider Runway AI successfully raised a total of $46 million in funding. MosaicML secured $37 million in funding, pushing the company's valuation to $1.3 billion.
The above highlights six of the top investors in the AI field in 2023 and their investment projects, reflecting the current importance of AI startups in the business environment and signaling that AI will continue to play a key role in shaping the future development of industries.