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The year 2023 has witnessed a remarkable surge in investments in artificial intelligence (AI), marking a significant milestone in the technology’s evolution and adoption.
Tracing back a bit, the momentum in AI investments isn’t brand new. In 2021, investors poured $29.5 billion into AI startups.
But that figure pales compared to the amounts funneled into the sector so far this year. The scale of investment has grown exponentially, underscoring investors’ increasing confidence and interest.
In 2023, more than 25% of all investment dollars in American startups have been channeled into AI-related companies, a significant increase from previous years (where it averaged about 12% between 2018 and 2022).
Is this a bubble? Or — much like how “anything that’s a website” attracted funding at the end of the 1990s — is AI simply too essential to modern life to expect anything less?
2023: The Year Generative AI Takes the Lead
A particular trend that garnered significant attention and investment is the rise of large language models (LLMs) and their generative AI capabilities.
A recent report by Goldman Sachs predicts global investment in artificial intelligence to reach as high as $200 billion by 2025. According to the report,
“Generative AI has enormous economic potential and could boost global labor productivity by more than 1 percentage point a year in the decade following widespread usage.”
This growth could contribute up to 4% of the U.S. GDP and 2.5% of the GDP in other major investing nations by 2025, rivaling the impact of past technological revolutions like electricity and personal computers.
Up until now, this year has witnessed a considerable investment influx into AI startups. OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT and DALL-E, saw its valuation soar to $86 billion.
READ MORE: 6 Generative AI Start-Ups to Watch
Even amidst market fluctuations, such as the recent ousting (and return) of Sam Altman as CEO of Open AI, the sector will remain resilient as the benefits and use cases outweigh such events.
Major players like Amazon, Nvidia, and Microsoft are heavily investing in AI startups, with recent headlines claiming Google intends to invest “hundreds of millions” into AI startup Character.AI.
This follows Amazon’s significant $4 billion commitment to Anthropic.
Notable AI Start-up Investments
Hugging Face
Hugging Face emerges as a noteworthy startup, securing $235 million in Series D funding, led by prominent investors including Salesforce and Nvidia, and valued at $4.5 billion. This funding reflects the immense interest in AI development platforms and will expand Hugging Face’s products and services.
Offering a GitHub-like hub for AI code, models, and data science tools, Hugging Face also provides functionalities like AutoTrain and Inference API, streamlining AI model training and deployment.
Cohere
Specializing in Natural Language Processing (NLP), Cohere has developed an AI model ecosystem tailored for enterprises. In its recent Series C funding round, Cohere raised $270 million, bringing its valuation between $2.1 and $2.2 billion.
The company collaborates closely with customers to create custom LLMs based on proprietary data, aiming to provide accessible, customizable, data-secure AI solutions.
Anthropic
Known for its Claude platform, Anthropic offers content generation, customer support, text translation, and summarization. It’s aimed at providing customizable and less prone to inappropriate responses AI solutions.
Anthropic has attracted significant investment from Google and others, reaching a valuation of $4.1 billion.
The Impact of AI and MLOps on Industry and Artistry
AI has dramatically altered various creative and technical fields. Tools like GitHub Copilot and Replit GhostWriter are revolutionizing software development through automated code generation and efficient coding assistance. Beyond coding, AI platforms are now adept at producing quality written content for digital marketing, journalism, and creative writing.
In the art and design arena, tools like DALL-E and Midjourney enable users to create intricate, original artworks with simple prompts, challenging traditional notions of artistry. Moreover, the emergence of multimodal AI applications, which blend text, image, and audio, enhances educational and entertainment experiences, making them more immersive and personalized.
The most striking aspect of these developments is their transition from theoretical possibilities to practical, everyday tools and applications.
These AI advancements are no longer just concepts; they’re being integrated into various industries, reshaping how we work, create, and entertain. The practical adoption of AI in these fields is a testament to its maturity and the growing confidence in its capabilities.
As AI becomes more integrated and accessible, investment in AI-focused and machine learning operations (MLOps) startups is also expected to grow. MLOps, a critical area in AI, involves managing and automating the ML lifecycle, from model development to deployment and monitoring.
In 2023, the MLOps area of startups will feature a blend of open-source and closed-source solutions, offering flexibility, community support, and enterprise-grade features.
This trend is exemplified by startups like Deepset, which recently raised $30 million in funding to expand its LLM-focused MLOps offerings. Deepset, co-launched in 2018, developed Haystack, an open-source framework for building NLP back-end services.
The potential of the MLOps sector is enormous, with Allied Market Research predicting its value to reach $37.4 billion by 2031, up from around $1.4 billion in 2022. The broader MLOps sector sees significant competition from established cloud services providers like AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud and emerging startups.
Other noteworthy startups in this space include Seldon, Galileo, Iguazio, Diveplane, Arize, and Tecton, each contributing innovative products, platforms, and services to the MLOps ecosystem.
Is AI the Bubble that Will Burst?
As we inspect closely the surging investments in AI, particularly around LLMs and generative AI, the question arises: Is this a sustainable expansion or a speculative bubble?
The significant seed funding of startups like Mistral AI, which raised $113 million after just four weeks of starting up, points to a fervent investment climate. This funding is partly due to the high costs of AI development hardware, such as NVIDIA’s H100s and A100s, crucial for AI training.
NVIDIA, a company at the forefront of GPU technology, emerges as a long-term beneficiary of this trend, providing the essential hardware driving AI advancements.
While investments in AI startups are considered high-risk, the widespread adoption of AI indicates a significant technological shift. Venture capital trends and strategies in AI might raise concerns about the value of small, speculative investments.
We must consider the broader tech giants like Microsoft, Google, and Amazon. With their vast data resources and robust GPU infrastructures, these companies are crucial in supporting AI development.
While investments in AI startups carry inherent risks, the broad engagement of these major tech firms underlines a more substantial, long-term shift in technology investment trends, offering a mix of stability and innovation in the AI sector.
The Bottom Line: From Hype to Impact in 2024
As 2024 approaches, the AI industry is transitioning from a phase of excitement to practical deployment and widespread application. After significant breakthroughs in generative AI, expectations are high for these technologies to boost productivity across various industries.
Integrating AI into business models involves not only technology but also the right processes and structures for its practical use, with the identification of specific use cases crucial for business growth.
Moreover, AI’s ability to swiftly and accurately process large data volumes is increasingly vital for investors. By leveraging AI to uncover trends, patterns, and data relationships that might be challenging for human analysis, it can inform more strategic investment decisions.
