70 Large AI Investment Rounds from 2024 Across 10 Categories - Part 1
In Segments Including AI Compute, Foundation Models & Developer Tools, Visual & Audio Content Generation and Healthcare
This article appeared in the Artificial Intelligence Report earlier this week.
Start-up funding rounds are an indicator of what use cases hold the most potential in the eyes of founders, their customers and VC investors. AI is a technology with a very broad range of applications and builders from many verticals are experimenting, deploying and offering solutions across the stack and the spectrum of human activities, from leisure and entertainment to many professional activities. Some AI use cases are in their fastest growth phase now, ready to start maturing this year, while others will take off slower in the coming phases of AI development.
Let’s look at the AI start-ups that have been funded well so far in 2024.
This is a collection of over 70 individual funding rounds, published in two parts, from the past six months from around the world that are larger than US$50M, making up over US$18.6B, and an analysis of the AI areas and the drivers that are considered most promising in the market today.
The ten categories that received large individual investments in 2024 are:
Compute
Models & Developer Tools
Visual & Audio Content Generation
Healthcare
Employee & Customer Support
Search & Answers
Coding Assistants
Business Task Automation
Robotics
Autonomous Driving
The vast majority of the start-ups in this collection are based in the United States and the San Francisco Bay Area, and others are headquartered in London, Toronto, Seoul, Berlin and Beijing, among others.
The collection includes 4 Seed rounds, 8 Series A, 14 Series B, 13 Series C, 4 Series D, 1 Series E and 1 Series F.
Part 1 explores the infrastructure layer (Compute, Models and Developer Tools, Visual and Audio Content Generation), as well as the Healthcare application vertical, and Part 2 the other six segments: Employee and Customer Support, Search and Answers, Coding Assistants, Business Task Automation, Robotics and Autonomous Driving.
AI Compute Accelerators and GPU Clouds
The AI compute market is experiencing rapid growth, driven by escalating demand for low-latency inference and efficient training of models. The rising need is generated by the requirements of deploying autonomous driving and conversational AI at scale. Partially or fully self-driving vehicles require fast inference to make split-second decisions in order to maintain safety on the roads, while conversational AI at scale requires low latency conditions in order to serve a lot of customers at the same time.
Companies innovating to optimize the AI compute layer that received large investment rounds this year are: CoreWeave, Lambda, Celestial AI, Rebellions AI, Hailo, Etched AI, Blaize, Recogni, Foundry, SiMa. They range from dedicated GPU cloud providers to makers of optical interconnect technology and producers of Neural Processing Units (NPUs).
CoreWeave provides a Kubernetes native cloud built for large, GPU-accelerated workloads, which can be used for AI inference, as well as VFX and rendering. Based in Roseland, New Jersey, the company last raised a US$1.1B Series C from investors including Coatue, Magnetar and Altimeter Capital.
Lambda is a GPU cloud built for AI developers featuring NVIDIA H100, NVIDIA H200 and NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs for AI training & inference. Based in San Jose, CA, the company last raised a US$350M Series C led by the US Innovative Technology Fund and joined by B Capital, SK Telecom, T. Rowe Price Associates, Inc., and existing investors Crescent Cove, Mercato Partners, 1517 Fund, Bloomberg Beta, and Gradient Ventures.
Celestial AI is the creator of the Photonic Fabric, an optical interconnect technology platform for compute and memory, which enables data transmission directly to the point of compute within AI accelerators and GPUs, in order to reduce latency and power consumption. Based in Santa Clara, CA, the company last raised a US$175M Series C led by the US Innovation Technology Fund and joined by AMD Ventures, Koch Disruptive Technologies (KDT), Temasek, IAG Capital Partners and Samsung Catalyst, among others.
Rebellions AI aims to “Reimagine AI compute”, with its Neural Processing Units (NPUs), optimized for latency-critical inference workloads and hyper-scale machine learning. Based in Seoul, South Korea, the company last raised a US$124M Series B from investors including KT, Shinhan Venture Investment, Temasek Pavilion Capital, Korea Development Bank and Korelya Capital.
Hailo provides edge and computer vision AI processors and accelerators for verticals such as automotive, security, industrial automation, retail and personal compute. Based in Tel Aviv, Israel, the company last raised a US$120M from investors including Comasco and OurCrowd.
Etched AI is the developer of Sohu, a transformer ASIC (application-specific integrated circuit) designed to train, deploy and optimize models with less power than a GPU. Based in Menlo Park, CA the company last raised a US$120M Series A from investors including Peter Thiel and Amjad Masad.
Blaize provides a full-stack AI computing platform that includes SoCs optimized for running models efficiently on edge devices, as well as a low-code / no-code software suite for AI application deployment. Based in El Dorado Hills, CA, the company last raised a US$106M round from investors including Bess Ventures, Franklin Templeton, DENSO, Mercedes-Benz AG, and Temasek.
Recogni focuses on inference computing and provides an AI cloud, pretrained models and a SDK for autonomous vehicles and generative AI. Based on San Jose, CA, the company last raised a US$102M Series C led by Celesta Capital and GreatPoint Ventures and joined by Mayfield, DNS Capital, BMW i Ventures, and SW Mobility Fund, among others.
Foundry is a GPU cloud provider optimized for machine learning workloads who aims to “orchestrate the world’s compute capacity, rendering it universally accessible and useful”. Based in Palo Alto, CA, the company last raised a US$80M Series A from investors including Sequoia Capital, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Redpoint, Microsoft Ventures (M12), Conviction and NEA.
SiMa provides a MLSoC (Machine Learning System-on-Chip) platform for deploying and scaling AI at the edge, with focus on computer vision applications, such as industrial robotics and autonomous vehicles. Based in San Jose, CA, the company last raised a US$70M Series C led by Maverick Capital and joined by Point72, Jericho, Amplify Partners and Dell Technologies Capital, among others.
AI Models & Developer Tools
The strong growth in the AI model and developer tools segment is fueled by the demand for a large variety of licenseable models, model training platforms and software development platforms that can cover the diverse array of use cases AI can address and the needs of the developers building the applications.
At the same time, there are significant challenges that need to be addressed, such as hallucinations, improving model interpretability, and safety and alignment. Developers need tools that not only facilitate the creation and deployment of AI products but are also reliable and performant in real-world scenarios.
This year the market has been experiencing a surge in investment and development activity aimed at delivering the tools and models that can overcome these challenges and unlock the full potential of AI across many domains.
The start-ups that received large investments in 2024 are: X.AI, Anthropic, Scale AI, Mistral AI, Cohere, Kore AI, Together AI, Reka AI, Krutrim and Hume AI.
x.AI is the provider of the Grok series of foundation models and a start-up focused on the development of advanced AI systems that are beneficial for all of humanity and help us understand “the true nature of the universe”. Based in Burlingame, CA, the company last raised a US$6B Series B from investors including Valor Equity Partners, Vy Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital.
Anthropic is the developer of the Claude foundation model series and an AI safety research start-up. Based in San Francisco, CA, the company raised a US$750M round in February led by Menlo Ventures and a US$4B round in March from Amazon.
Scale AI provides data annotation and labeling services to help companies build high-quality training datasets for machine learning applications. Based in San Francisco, CA, the company last raised a US$1B Series F led by Accel and joined by Y Combinator, Nat Friedman, Index Ventures, Founders Fund, Coatue, Thrive Capital, Spark Capital, NVIDIA, Tiger Global Management, among others.
Mistral AI is the developer of the Mistral series of foundation models and provider of an AI application development platform that prioritizes openness, portability and value. Based in Paris, France, the company last raised a US$645M round led by General Catalyst and joined by Lightspeed Ventures and a16z.
Cohere provides a series of foundation models optimized for enterprise use and RAG applications, as well as an application development platform. Based in Toronto, Canada, the company last raised a US$450M round from investors including NVIDIA, Salesforce Ventures and Cisco.
Kore AI builds a developer platform featuring pretrained LLMs, no-code builder tools and virtual assistants that can be deployed within enterprises for a variety of use cases, from customer support to employee experience and enterprise search. Based in Orlando, FL, the company last raised a US$150M Series D led by FTC Capital, with participation from NVIDIA, Vistara Growth, Sweetwater PE and NextEquity.
Together AI offers a cloud platform for building and running generative AI, as well as the RedPajama foundation model series. Based in San Francisco, the company last raised a US$106M Series A led by Salesforce Ventures and joined by Coatue, Lux Capital and Emergence Capital.
Reka AI provides multimodal foundation models trained with proprietary data from various industries, such as commerce, financial services, healthcare and robotics. Based in Sunnyvale, CA, the company last raised a US$60M round led by DST Global Partners and Radical Ventures and joined by Snowflake Ventures, among others.
Krutrim is on a mission to enable India’s 1.4B consumers, developers and entrepreneurs with the power of AI and provides foundation models, cloud infrastructure and silicon optimized for machine learning. Based in Bangalore, India, the company last raised a US$50M Series A led by Matrix Partners India.
Hume AI develops multimodal AI that gives applications emotional intelligence. Its voice AI is built to respond empathically and better align technology with human interests by measuring vocal modulations and matching prosody, end-of-turn detection, and interruptibility to its conversation partners. Based in New York, NY, the company last raised a US$50M Series B led by EQT Ventures and joined by Union Square Ventures, Metaplanet, Northwell Holdings, Comcast Ventures, and LG Technology Ventures.
Visual & Audio Content Generation
Visual and audio content generation services cater to diverse industries, including entertainment, marketing, education, and gaming, and enable the creation of images, videos, music, and voiceovers through AI.
Growth drivers in this segment include the increasing need for personalized content, the scalability of AI solutions that reduce production time and costs, and the rising popularity of immersive experiences like virtual reality and augmented reality.
Challenges in this space include ensuring the authenticity and originality of AI-generated content, managing intellectual property rights, and addressing ethical concerns related to deepfakes and the potential misuse of generated media.
Start-ups in this space that received large investment rounds in 2024 are: Suno, Pika, Stability AI, Eleven Labs, HeyGen, Ideogram and Twelve Labs.
Suno is building a future where anyone can make great music with their text-to-song and sound-to-song generation service. Based in Cambridge, MA, the company last raised a US$125M Series B from investors including Lightspeed Ventures, Matrix and Founder Collective.
Pika provides an idea-to-video platform with text-to-video, image-to-video and video-to-video generation, as well as sound effects and video editing capabilities. Based on Palo Alto, CA, the company last raised a US$80M Series B led by Spark Capital and joined by Greycroft and Lightspeed, among others.
Stability AI is a generative visual art service and provider of the Stable foundation model series, as well as a creative AI assistant. Its model portfolio includes image, video, audio, 3D and language options. Based in London, UK, the company last raised a US$80M round from a group of investors including Coatue Management and Lightspeed Venture Partners.
Eleven Labs enables users to create AI voice in any style and language. The service supports text-to-speech, speech-to-speech, dubbing, text-to-sfx and voice cloning. Based in San Francisco, CA the company last raised a US$80M Series B led by a16z and joined by Sequoia, Smash Capital, SV Angel, BroadLight Capital and Credo Ventures.
HeyGen helps produce studio-quality videos with AI-generated avatars and voices, as well as video translations and streaming avatars. Its aim is to help businesses scale their visual storytelling for employees and customers. Based in Los Angeles, CA, the company last raised a US$60M Series A led by Benchmark and joined by Thrive Capital, BOND, Conviction, among others.
Ideogram is an AI tool that generates realistic images, posters and logos, with features such as text tendering, negative prompting, Magic prompt and image captioning. Based in Toronto, Canada, the company last raised a US$58M Series A round led by a16z, with participation from Index Ventures, Redpoint Ventures, Pear VC, and SV Angel, among others.
Twelve Labs creates “Multimodal AI that understands videos like humans”. Its models and tools enable users to search, generate and classify videos, as well as create captions and catalogs for them. Based in San Francisco, CA, the company last raised a US$50M Series A led by NEA and NVIDIA, with participation Index Ventures, Radical Ventures, Wndr Co, and Korea Investment Partners, among others.
AI Healthcare
The AI opportunity in healthcare is vast and applications in this sector range from diagnostics and personalized treatment plans to predictive medical analytics and administrative automation. AI can assist in early disease detection, optimize treatment protocols, and improve patient monitoring, leading to more accurate diagnoses and effective interventions.
Key drivers are the increasing availability of vast amounts of data from electronic health records (EHRs), the growth of telemedicine and remote monitoring, and the escalating need for efficient healthcare delivery systems in the face of an aging population and rising chronic diseases.
Challenges include ensuring data privacy and security, integrating AI systems with existing healthcare infrastructure, addressing the regulatory landscape, and overcoming the inherent biases in AI models trained on non-representative data sets.
The start-ups that received large investments in 2024 range from providers of medical administrative tools, to assistants for diagnostics, radiology, physical therapy and clinical note-taking. The firms are: Abridge, Sword Health, Ambience Healthcare, Overjet, Hippocratic AI, Unlearn AI, Rad AI and Smarter Dx.
Abridge provides an AI platform for clinical conversations that takes notes in real-time of patient-doctor conversations across 50+ specialties in 14+ languages. Based in Pittsburgh, PA, the company last raised a US$150M Series C co-led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and Redpoint Ventures, with participation from the Mass General Brigham AI Fund and Kaiser Permanente Ventures.
Sword Health combines AI with clinical expertise to provide virtual and digital physical therapy solutions to help people manage pain without the need for opioids or unnecessary surgeries. Based in New York, NY, the company last raised US$130M from investors including Khosla Ventures.
Ambience Healthcare is building the AI operating system for healthcare featuring a variety of applications, including automated documentation, CDI assistance, creation of after-visit summaries and referral letters and pre-charting. Based in San Francisco, CA, the company last raised a US$70M Series B co-led by Kleiner Perkins and the OpenAI Startup Fund, with participation from a16z and Optum Ventures.
Overjet is an AI platform for dentistry, assisting professionals to operate efficiently - from detecting oral disease, to education patients with annotated images, ao getting insurance claims submitted and reviewed. Based in Cambridge, MA, the company last raised a US$53M Series C led by March Capital, with participation from General Catalyst, Insight Partners, E14 Fund, Crosslink Capital, Spring Rock Capital, Liquid 2 Ventures, and Harmonic Growth Partners.
Hippocratic AI safety-focused generative AI solutions for healthcare, including foundation models, AI agents optimized for patient interaction across medical situations, such as pre-op, discharge, chronic care, nutrition consultations, pharmacy and assisted living. Based in Palo Alto, CA, the company last raised a US$53M Series A co-led by Premji Invest and General Catalyst, with participation from SV Angel and Memorial Hermann Health System and a16z, among others.
Unlearn AI develops generative models to create digital twins of individual patients to design more efficient, ethical, and reliable clinical studies. Their mission is to advance AI to eliminate trial and error in medicine and revolutionize clinical research. Based in San Francisco, CA, the company last raised a US$50M Series C led by Altimeter Capital and joined by Insight Partners, 8VC and DCVC.
Rad AI develops AI software to assist radiologists in generating reports more efficiently through automated impression generation. Based in Berkeley, CA, the company last raised a US$50M Series B led by Khosla Ventures, with participation from World Innovation Lab, ARTIS Ventures, OCV Partners, Kickstart Fund and Gradient Ventures.
SmarterDx helps hospitals improve revenue integrity and quality of care by identifying missed documentation and coding opportunities. The tool analyzes 30,000 data points per patient chart, including notes, labs, medications, orders, vitals, and ICD-10 codes, to arrive at differential diagnoses and pinpoint potential revenue and quality issues before billing. Based in New York, NY, the company last raised a US$50M Series B led by Transformation Capital, with participation from Bessemer Venture Partners, Flare Capital Partners and Floodgate Fund.
Stay tuned for Part 2 of this collection, where we examine other promising AI verticals: Employee and Customer Support, Search and Answers, Coding Assistants, Business Task Automation, Robotics and Autonomous Driving.
In the meantime, if you are looking for more analysis of AI funding rounds, check out:
Very well done. Good analysis and categorization of market segments.