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☆ Early Facebook investor Accel raises $650 million fund to back European and Israeli startups
▼ + stars: | 2024-05-13 | by ( Ryan Browne | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +6 min

AccelVenture capital firm Accel said Tuesday it's raised $650 million for its eighth fund targeted at investing in European and Israeli early-stage startups, in a sign the venture capital market may be showing signs of a recovery. "The environment has dramatically changed since then," Nelis told CNBC. Climate-focused VC firm World Fund closed a 300 million euro fund in March. "We're lucky that with DeepMind here in London and with Fair [Facebook AI Research] in Paris, there's at least two big centers that have great AI expertise," Nelis told CNBC. "My expectation is Europe is going to generate some really interesting AI application companies," Nelis told CNBC.

Persons: Harry Nelis, Sonali de Rycker, Andrei Brasoveanu, Luca Bocchio, Philippe Botteri, it's, Nelis, UiPath, Russia's, Wise, Magnus Grimeland, Grimeland, there's, Victor Riparbelli, Synthesia, Riparbelli Organizations: Accel, Accel Venture, Spotify, CNBC, Skype, U.S, Nvidia Locations: Europe, Israel, Lithuania, Romania, Ukraine, New York, U.S, London, Paris, Synthesia

AI (Artificial Intelligence) letters are placed on computer motherboard in this illustration taken June 23, 2023. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo Acquire Licensing RightsSTOCKHOLM, Oct 17 (Reuters) - Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) companies have become the major driver of unicorns -- startups reaching $1 billion valuation -- with 60% of the new ones falling in this category, according to a report from venture capital firm Accel. AI foundation models, developed by Microsoft-backed OpenAI, Meta and others, are capable of generating text, images or other media in response to prompts. Europe, home to AI startups such as AI video avatar platform Synthesia and Stability AI, is already producing 50% more AI publications than the United States with similar citation rate, according to the report. Reporting by Supantha Mukherjee in Stockholm, editing by Deborah KyvrikosaiosOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Persons: Dado Ruvic, Philippe Botteri, Botteri, Supantha Mukherjee, Deborah Kyvrikosaios Organizations: REUTERS, Rights, Accel, Microsoft, Nvidia, Thomson Locations: Rights STOCKHOLM, Israeli, Meta, Europe, United States, Stockholm

☆ AI gave tech giants a $2.4 trillion boost to their market caps in 2023
▼ + stars: | 2023-10-17 | by ( Ryan Browne | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +5 min

Nvidia's high-performance chips power many advanced generative AI models, which produce new content from huge volumes of training data. The world has been abuzz with talk about generative AI tools like OpenAI's ChatGPT, Google's Bard and Anthropic's Claude. The U.S. led the way in generative AI funding deals, with the likes of OpenAI and Anthropic raising billions. AccelIn Europe, three of the biggest generative AI company rounds came out of France — Hugging Face ($235 million), Poolside ($126 million) and Mistral AI ($113 million). In Europe and Israel, 40% of new unicorns were in generative AI; in the United States, it was 80%.

Persons: Botteri, Google's Bard, Anthropic's Claude, Philippe Botteri, they're, OpenAI, they'd Organizations: Future Publishing, Getty Images, Accel, Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia, Companies, Nasdaq, U.S, Public, CNBC, Mistral, Tech, Big Tech, FAANG, Netflix, Google Locations: U.S, Unity, Europe, Israel, France, United States

☆ Web Summit CEO apologises for comments on Israeli conflict
▼ + stars: | 2023-10-17 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

JERUSALEM, Oct 17 (Reuters) - Web Summit Chief Executive and founder Paddy Cosgrave on Tuesday apologised for comments he made on the Israeli-Hamas conflict that prompted some technology companies and investors to withdraw plans to attend its conference in Portugal next month. Web Summit, one of the world's largest tech conferences, will take place in Lisbon from Nov. 13-16, with attendees from companies such as Meta (META.O) and Microsoft (MSFT.O) to investors such as Atomico. "War crimes are war crimes even when committed by allies, and should be called out for what they are," wrote Cosgrave, who was born in Ireland. Among executives to have cancelled their participation at Web Summit are AI21 Labs' Ori Goshen; Tome's Keith Peiris; Sequoia Capital partner Ravi Gupta; Yinon Costica, co-founder of Israeli cybersecurity unicorn Wiz; and Y Combinator’s Garry Tan, according to LinkedIn and X posts. Philippe Botteri, CEO of tech investor Accel, said in a LinkedIn post on Monday he would no longer speak at Web Summit.

Persons: Paddy Cosgrave, Cosgrave, I’m, Leo Varadkar's, Israel, Cosgrove, Goshen, Tome's Keith Peiris, Ravi Gupta, Yinon Costica, Y, Garry Tan, Philippe Botteri, Portugal Dor Shapira, Steven Scheer, Supantha Mukherjee, Josephine Mason, Alison Williams, Mark Potter Organizations: Web, Microsoft, Palestinian, Hamas, Irish, AI21 Labs, Sequoia Capital, Thomson Locations: Portugal, Lisbon, Gaza, Israel, Ireland, Jerusalem, Stockholm, London

☆ A Nvidia-backed platform that turns text into A.I.-generated avatars boosts valuation to $1 billion
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-13 | by ( Ryan Browne | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +6 min

In this article NVDA Follow your favorite stocks CREATE FREE ACCOUNTAn animated avatar generated by the AI video platform Synthesia. To do that, Synthesia has created animated avatars which look and sound like humans, but are generated by AI. Synthesia is a form of generative AI, similar to OpenAI's ChatGPT. The company doesn't disclose its sales or revenue metrics, though it says it "consistently driven triple digit growth," with over 12 million videos produced on the platform to date. Synthesia plans to ramp up investment into its technology, with a particular focus on advancing its AI research and making Synthesia avatars capable of performing more tasks.

Persons: Synthesia, Slack, Kleiner Perkins, Morgan Stanley, Victor Riparbelli, Matthias Niessner, Steffen Tjerrild, Lourdes Agapito, Philippe Botteri, Riparbelli, Nvidia isn't, it's, They're, Felix Capital, Atomico, they're, David Beckham, Beckham Organizations: Nvidia, CNBC, Accel, Facebook, Spotify, GV, FirstMark, MMC, YouTube, Netflix, Business, Iconiq, Felix, Meritech Locations: London, A.I

☆ Tech companies have a 'war chest' of cash to see through downturn, says VC
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-02 | by ( ) www.cnbc.com time to read: 1 min

Share Share Article via Facebook Share Article via Twitter Share Article via LinkedIn Share Article via EmailTech companies have a 'war chest' of cash to see through downturn, says VCPhilippe Botteri, partner at venture capital firm Accel, says that now, unlike during the 2008 financial crisis, tech companies are in decent position to weather the economic downturn as they have large piles of cash reserved from the pandemic boom.

☆ Investment in cloud firms plunged 42% in Q3, says venture capitalist Accel
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-18 | by ( Supantha Mukherjee | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

While 51 cloud software developers raised funds at valuations of over $1 billion in the first quarter of 2022, only three did so in the third quarter, Accel's 2022 Euroscape report showed. The valuation of publicly listed cloud companies has also dropped to $1.2 trillion from $2.8 trillion in the last 12 months, Accel said. Rising interest rates and climbing inflation has led to contracted software valuations," said Philippe Botteri, a partner at Accel. "But we firmly believe that strong secular trends, like the shift to cloud, will continue to propel European and Israeli SaaS forward." There is around $770 billion available to buy cloud companies, with $440 billion of cash on the balance sheets of strategic investors and $330 billion of dry powder from technology-focused private equity funds, Accel estimated.

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