September AI Company Investment Ranking Released, Highest Investment Reaches $4 Billion
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With the explosion of large model technology, the artificial intelligence industry has attracted significant capital attention. Whether it's companies developing foundational large models or those researching AI applications, as long as they carry the AI label, they can secure substantial investments. These massive investment deals have also drawn considerable public interest.
Previously, we compiled a list of the top 10 AI companies by investment amount in August. Now, a similar list for September has been released. Topping this list is Anthropic, which recently secured a major investment from Amazon.
1. Anthropic
Anthropic announced a partnership with Amazon in late September, with Amazon investing $4 billion in Anthropic and acquiring a minority stake in the company.
Beyond investment, the two parties will combine their technical strengths to jointly advance the development of large-scale model technology. Additionally, Anthropic will gain access to AWS Trainium and Inferentia chips provided by Amazon to build, train, and deploy its future foundational models. Amazon employees, in turn, will be able to use Anthropic's models via Amazon Bedrock to develop products, integrating more generative AI technologies into their workflows to enhance user experiences across Amazon's various services.
Anthropic, an AI startup founded in 2021 by former OpenAI research VP Dario Amodei and large-scale model researcher Tom Brown, has grown into one of OpenAI's main competitors. Their flagship product, Claude, is now open for public testing, offering services like conversation and text processing. According to Anthropic, Claude can currently handle up to 100,000 tokens, enabling it to process large volumes of text content such as stories, letters, and memos simultaneously.
- Databricks
Ranking second, Databricks announced in late September that it had secured over $500 million in a new funding round, bringing its latest valuation to $43 billion—a $5 billion increase from its previous valuation. This round was led by T. Rowe Price, with participation from NVIDIA, Capital One Ventures, Octahedron Capital, Tiger Global Management, and Morgan Stanley's Counterpoint Global, among others.
Databricks was founded in 2013 and initially focused on providing data analytics services to clients. Recently, the company has been involved in the development of several AI application platforms. Databricks owns the data platform Lakehouse, which offers users unified data, analytics, and AI deployment solutions. This software not only helps users manage enterprise data but also quickly assists in building generative AI solutions.
Ranking third is Helsing, which is less well-known compared to the top two companies. However, in mid-September, Helsing announced a $223 million Series B funding round. The funding was led by General Catalyst, with participation from strategic investors such as Swedish aerospace company Saab. Helsing has not disclosed the specific use of these funds.
Founded in 2021, Helsing has been dedicated to using AI technology to enhance military capabilities. Since its inception, the company has focused on creating AI-driven military solutions and components, though its products have not been publicly disclosed.
Ranking fourth is AI startup Imbue, which secured $200 million in funding in early September, valuing the company at over $1 billion.
The funding round was led by the non-profit Astera Institute, founded by Jed McCaleb, with participation from Cruise CEO Kyle Vogt and NVIDIA. The funds will accelerate Imbue's AI system development to achieve its broader goals.
Founded in April 2021 and headquartered in San Francisco, California, Imbue is still in the R&D phase and has not yet released any AI products. The company emphasizes a focus on developing models and tools as a pathway to AGI, aiming to provide a platform for users to create customized models.
Currently, Imbue is developing a large-scale model with over 100 billion parameters (name undisclosed) and claims to possess 10,000 NVIDIA H100 GPUs to facilitate rapid model iteration.
5. Enfabrica
Silicon Valley startup Enfabrica ranks fifth with $126 million in funding.
This funding round was led by Atreides Management, with participation from long-time supporter NVIDIA, as well as IAG Capital Partners, Liberty Global Ventures, Valor Equity Partners, Infinitum Partners, and Alumni Ventures.
Enfabrica plans to use this investment to accelerate the production of its hardware device, Fabric Switch, and its solutions. This is a hardware device developed by Enfabrica that can reduce the computational costs of data center GPUs and accelerated computing clusters by 50% while expanding memory capacity by 50 times.
Founded in 2020, Enfabrica's startup team includes members from Broadcom, Cisco, Google, and other companies. Its main products include a network chip that connects different parts of data centers in new ways and improves GPU efficiency.
Ranking sixth is AI chip startup d-matrix, which secured $110 million in Series B funding in early September.
This funding round was led by Temasek, with participation from Playground Global, Microsoft's M12 venture fund, Nautilus Venture Partners, Entrada Ventures, Industry Ventures, Ericsson Ventures, Marlan Holdings, Mirae Asset, and Samsung, among others. It is reported that d-Matrix plans to invest the new funds in the recruitment and commercialization of its Corsair platform.
Founded in 2019 and headquartered in Silicon Valley, d-matrix focuses on producing chips for generative AI and large language models. The company has shipped over 100 million chips, with revenues exceeding $1 billion. d-matrix aims to address the compute-memory integration challenge through its digital in-memory computing architecture to improve the efficiency of AI computing power.
7.Writer
The seventh spot goes to Writer, a company specializing in text generation. This company announced the completion of a $100 million Series B funding round in mid-September, with its valuation now exceeding $500 million.
This round of funding was led by ICONIQ Growth, with participation from investors including WndrCo, Balderton Capital, Insight Partners, Aspect Ventures, Accenture, and Vanguard. Writer has not disclosed the specific use of this funding.
Founded in 2020, Writer focuses on generating and modifying text content, aiming to maximize creativity and productivity for clients in business processes. Writer offers three main products: its proprietary large language model PALMYRA, which helps users across various fields generate different types of text; a knowledge graph that assists businesses in organizing key information and documents while providing accurate answers and insights; and AI guardrails technology, which ensures content compliance and accuracy, reducing the need for lengthy manual editing and review cycles.
8.Inceptive
AI pharmaceutical company Inceptive ranks eighth with a $100 million investment. The company has raised over $120 million in total funding, with a valuation of $300 million.
Inceptive's Series A funding round saw participation from a16z, NVIDIA's venture arm NVentures, and Obvious Ventures. The company plans to use the capital to strengthen its AI platform and molecular design capabilities.
Founded in 2021 by former Google Brain scientist Jakob Uszkoreit (one of the eight creators of Transformer) and Stanford associate professor Rhiju Das, Inceptive focuses on using deep learning to design RNA drugs, particularly mRNA. The company currently has 310 pilot projects spanning from preclinical to clinical trial stages and has partnered with a major European pharmaceutical firm to develop a novel mRNA vaccine for infectious diseases. Uszkoreit predicts approximately 700 mRNA-based drugs will emerge in the next decade.
Ranking ninth is Pryon, which secured $100 million in Series B funding in mid-September. The round was led by the US Innovative Technology Fund, with participation from Aperture Venture Capital, BootstrapLabs, Breyer Capital, Duke Capital Partners, Good Growth Capital, Omimed Capital, and Revolutions Rise of Rest Seeds Fund. The funding will support Pryon's international expansion, team growth, and platform acceleration.
Founded in 2017, Pryon is an AI tool provider that uses contextual awareness, natural language processing, and other technologies to coordinate information across channels, enabling users to interact with voice-based agents. The company trains and deploys proprietary models grounded in concrete knowledge to avoid generating hallucinations.
10. Pixis
AI marketing solutions provider Pixis ranks tenth with $85 million in funding. This funding round brings Pixis' total funding to $209 million.
The funding was led by Touring Capital, with participation from Grupo Carso, General Atlantic, Celesta Capital, and Chiratae Ventures. In addition to strengthening Pixis' AI capabilities, the funds will be used to accelerate global expansion and invest in an AI-driven creative studio.
Founded in 2020, Pixis specializes in providing performance-enhancing marketing solutions for brands. The company has developed accessible AI technologies to benefit growth marketing, offering a comprehensive product suite including targeting, in-flight performance optimization, and generative AI capabilities.