AI21 Labs, a Tel Aviv, Israel-based startup that develops text-generating AI tools, raised $155 million in Series C funding, bringing its total raised to $283 million and values the company at $1.4 billion.
SaaS Investors
The round was led by Walden Catalyst, Pitango, SCB10X, b2venture, Samsung Next, and Amnon Shashua (co-founder of Intel-owned Mobileye an AI21 Labs co-founder). Google and Nvidia also participated in the round.
Founded in 2021, Walden Catalyst is a venture capital firm headquartered in San Francisco, California. The firm seeks to invest in early-stage companies operating in the data, deep tech, artificial intelligence, quantum, cloud, and digital biology sectors across the United States, Europe, and Israel region.
Pitango is an Israeli venture capital firm that has helped cultivate companies in the seed, early, and expansion stages in a diversified range of technology sectors. The firm partner via three parallel funds Pitango First, Pitango Growth, and Pitango HealthTech.
SCB 10X Co., Ltd. is a holding company of the SCBX Group. The company investment focused on disruptive technology, digital assets, blockchain, the metaverse, and Web3 via its two arms: Venture Capital and Venture Builder.
b2venture (formerly btov Partners) is a European venture firm leveraging the power of generations to shape tomorrow. The firm invests at the earliest stages.
Samsung Next is an investment group focused on founders pursuing the imagined and impossible. The firm prefers to invest in artificial intelligence, fintech, blockchain, health technology, infrastructure, and media technology sectors.
Amnon Shashua is the co-founder and CEO of autonomous vehicle technology firm Mobileye and an AI21 Labs co-founder.
AI21 Labs Use of Series C Funds
The funding will be used to accelerate AI21 Labs' research and development efforts, with a focus on developing AI capabilities for reasoning across multiple domains. The company also plans to expand its partnerships with tech companies, increase its headcount, and continue delivering up-to-date and reliable AI solutions.
About AI21 Labs
Founded in 2017 by Amnon Shashua, Yoav Shoham and Ori Goshen, AI21 Labs is an AI lab & product company that specializes in developing AI systems with an unprecedented capacity to understand and generate natural language. The company's flagship product, AI21 Studio, is a developer platform for building custom text-based business apps using AI21's proprietary text-generating AI models. The platform also offers AI-powered tools like Wordtune, a multilingual reading and writing AI assistant.
Funding Details
Company: AI21 Labs Ltd.
Raised: $155.0M
Round: Series C
Funding Month: August 2023
Lead Investors: Catalyst, Pitango, SCB10X, b2venture, Samsung Next, Amnon Shashua
Additional Investors: Google, and Nvidia
Company Website: https://www.ai21.com/
Software Category: AI and NLP Software
Source: https://techcrunch.com/2023/08/30/generative-ai-startup-ai21-labs-lands-155m-at-a-1-4b-valuation/