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☆ Salesforce markets itself as an AI company customers can trust. Customers aren't buying it yet.
▼ + stars: | 2023-12-18 | by ( Ellen Thomas | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

Salesforce has moved slowly on AI, RBC Capital Markets managing director Rishi Jaluria told Insider — at least that's what the company's partners and customers told him. One said they were encouraging customers to start first with Einstein, the original AI product Salesforce launched in 2016, before adding new generative-AI services to their bills. The question was the first of many moments during the conference when a Salesforce executive brought up trust and safety when talking about generative AI. Despite that, Salesforce continues to invest in other companies via its venture arm, which includes a $500 million Generative AI fund. Jaluria said that with the exception of Microsoft, he doesn't expect software companies to see meaningful revenue gains from generative AI until at least 2025.

Persons: Salesforce, Rishi Jaluria, —, Jaluria, they've, Einstein, Matthew McConaughey, pensively, Patrick Stokes, Salesforce's, Stokes, it's, There's, John Somorjai, McKinsey's, Somorjai, Ellen Thomas Organizations: Company, Business, RBC Capital Markets, World, Salesforce Ventures, Microsoft Locations: New York, ethomas@insider.com

☆ After closed door OpenAI drama, open source AI backed by Nvidia, Eric Schmidt, could emerge winner
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-22 | by ( Rebecca Fannin | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +5 min

The Hugging Face website on a laptop arranged in New York, US, on Thursday, Aug. 17, 2023. "We should encourage all companies to build on disruption-proof AI technology that only open source can offer." To be clear, big bets made on open source AI pre-date last Friday when news first broke of Sam Altman's removal as OpenAI CEO, and those bets include an open source AI model controlled by one dominant tech company, Meta Platforms ' Llama. Open source and AI governanceFormer Google CEO Eric Schmidt is behind Mistral AI, another open source rival to OpenAI's ChatGPT. A third open source AI startup, Poolside AI, recently pulled in $126 million co-led by French telecom and internet billionaire Xavier Niel and U.S. VC firm Felicis Ventures.

Persons: Gabby Jones, Eric Schmidt, Sam Altman, Microsoft —, Mike Gualtieri, Forrester, Marc Benioff, Delip Rao, Sam Altman's, Thomas Wolf, We've, Wolf, Linus Torvalds, Paul Drews, OpenAI's, Arthur Mensch, Mistral, Xavier Niel Organizations: Nvidia, Bloomberg, Getty Images Tech, Salesforce, Qualcomm, Microsoft, Twitter, Google, Meta, IBM, Intel, Sequoia Capital, Salesforce Ventures, Mistral, alums, Lightspeed Venture Partners, French, . VC, Felicis Ventures Locations: New York, France

☆ Deutsche Bank and UniCredit back $4.5 billion insurance startup Wefox with $55 million in fresh funds
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-03 | by ( Ryan Browne | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +2 min

Wefox, the $4.5 billion German insurance technology group, has raised $55 million of fresh funding from Deutsche Bank and UniCredit , two anonymous sources familiar with the deal told CNBC. The deal was structured as a convertible debt agreement, meaning that the debt will be converted into equity when Wefox next raises cash, the sources told CNBC. The fresh funding follows on from a $55 million debt round Wefox raised from JPMorgan and Barclays and a $55 million internal fundraise earlier this year. As Wefox didn't raise equity, its valuation remains unchanged at $4.5 billion. Wefox is also pushing into a new model of selling insurance called "affinity" distribution.

Persons: Wefox, Goldman Sachs Organizations: Deutsche Bank, CNBC, JPMorgan, Barclays, VC, Salesforce Ventures, Target, Horizon Ventures, UBS, Mubadala Capital Ventures, Jupiter Asset Locations: U.S, Germany, Paris, Barcelona, Milan

July 18 (Reuters) - Consultancy giant McKinsey said it had struck a partnership with artificial intelligence startup Cohere in an effort to provide AI solutions to its enterprise clients. We found Cohere to be one of the great solutions out there," Ben Ellencweig, senior partner at McKinsey, told Reuters in an interview. McKinsey said it was working with Cohere to build customized solutions to help improve customer engagement and workflow automation for clients. Cohere competes with OpenAI with a focus on generative AI solutions for enterprises. It also announced a partnership with Oracle, which will embed Cohere's generative AI technology in its products.

Persons: Ben Ellencweig, Cohere, Martin Kon, PwC, Bain, Krystal Hu, Himani Sarkar Organizations: Consultancy, McKinsey, Microsoft, Reuters, Google, Nvidia, Oracle, Salesforce Ventures, Cohere, Accenture, Company, Deloitte, Thomson Locations: New York

☆ AI company Runway valued at $1.5 bln in latest funding -source
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-29 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

June 29 (Reuters) - AI company Runway has been valued at $1.5 billion in its latest round of funding, a source familiar with the matter said on Thursday, after it raised $141 million from investors, including Alphabet-owned Google (GOOGL.O) and Nvidia (NVDA.O). The extension to the Series C funding round was also led by Salesforce Ventures and existing investors, the company said in a statement. Runway's software allows users to transform or tweak existing videos or create new videos by using text prompts or images. The company also launched a mobile app earlier this year, giving its users access to its generative AI tools. Reporting by Jaiveer Singh Shekhawat in Bengaluru and Krystal Hu in Toronto; Editing by Anil D'SilvaOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Persons: Jensen Huang, Jaiveer Singh, Krystal Hu, Anil D'Silva Organizations: Runway, Nvidia, Salesforce Ventures, Thomson Locations: Bengaluru, Toronto

☆ AI company Runway valued at $1.5 billion in latest funding
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-29 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

June 29 (Reuters) - AI company Runway has been valued at $1.5 billion in its latest round of funding, a source familiar with the matter said on Thursday, after it raised $141 million from investors, including Alphabet-owned Google (GOOGL.O) and Nvidia (NVDA.O). The extension to the Series C funding round also included Salesforce Ventures and Runway's existing investors, the company said in a statement. Runway's software allows users to transform or tweak existing videos or create new videos by using text prompts or images. The company also launched a mobile app earlier this year, giving its users access to its generative AI tools. Earlier in the day, another AI startup Inflection raised $1.3 billion from Microsoft at a valuation of $4 billion, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters.

Persons: Jensen Huang, Jaiveer Singh, Krystal Hu, Anil D'Silva Organizations: Runway, Nvidia, Salesforce Ventures, Microsoft, Reuters, Thomson Locations: Bengaluru, Toronto

The sources cautioned that no deal is certain and asked not to be identified because the matter is confidential. Spokespeople for nCino did not immediately respond to requests for comment, while Insight Partners declined to comment. Shares of nCino ended trading in New York on Friday up 24% at $31.69 on the news, giving the company a market value of about $3.6 billion. Based in Wilmington, North Carolina, nCino offers cloud-based software to banks and financial institutions that helps digitize their processes, including around lending and deposit-taking. The company subsequently attracted several venture capital investors beyond Insight Partners, including Wellington Management, Salesforce Ventures, Bessemer Partners and T. Rowe Price.

Persons: nCino's, nCino, Rowe Price, Milana Vinn, David French, Daniel Wallis, Jonathan Oatis Organizations: nCino, Insight Partners, Wellington Management, Salesforce Ventures, Bessemer Partners, Thomson Locations: New York, Wilmington , North Carolina, North Carolina

☆ Oracle is betting its AI future on a company called Cohere. Here's why this little-known startup is becoming OpenAI's chief rival.
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-13 | by ( Julie Bort | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Oracle is offering generative AI to its customers based on tech from a startup called Cohere. Oracle will be embedding Cohere's generative AI technology into a bunch of its products and Cohere will be using Oracle's cloud to train, build, and deploy its generative AI models, Oracle chairman and CTO Larry Ellison said. One is that Cohere is designed for enterprise customers, meaning companies can use their own data to train their AI models, without sharing that data. But at the moment, Cohere is the only partner Oracle announced to power its generative AI services for customers, though this could change one day. He was a research intern at Google Brain in 2017 when he co-authored a paper on a way of training AI models to improve their abilities to understand language.

Persons: Cohere, Geoffrey Hinton, Fei, Fei Li, Pieter Abbeel, Larry Ellison, That's, Ellison, OpenAI, ChatGPT, Salesforce, Aidan Gomez, cofounders, Nick Frosst, Ivan Zhang, Gomez Organizations: Oracle, Morning, NVIDIA, Salesforce Ventures, New York Times, Microsoft, Wall, Nvidia, Google, Cohere Locations: Cohere, OpenAI, Toronto

☆ Salesforce is developing a ton of new AI products that could lead to 'a massive new buying cycle' Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley analysts believe
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-09 | by ( Julie Bort | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Salesforce could be leading it, with a giant list of new AI products in the works. And he told tale after tale of planned AI products. Morgan Stanley's Keith Weiss believes Salesforce's claims that AI has the potential to "spark a massive new buying cycle." Rangan tallied up 15 pending AI products from Salesforce. There will be five new AI products incorporated into the Marketing cloud to automate tasks ranging from personalized emails to analyzing engagement.

Persons: Salesforce, Marc Benioff, Claude, Goldman Sachs, Kash Rangan, Salesforce's, Einstein, Rangan, Morgan Stanley's Keith Weiss, Weiss Organizations: OpenAI, Salesforce Ventures, Google, Salesforce's, Slack, Products, Next

☆ AI startup Cohere raises $270 mln in Nvidia-backed funding round
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-08 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

June 8 (Reuters) - Cohere, an AI foundation model company that competes with Microsoft-backed OpenAI, said on Thursday it had raised $270 million in a funding round backed by Nvidia (NVDA.O), Oracle (ORCL.N) and Salesforce Ventures, among others. Generative AI aims to make human-like creations through computer code that has processed vast amounts of data. Cohere did not reveal its valuation after the latest funding round. AI startups are a bright spot in an otherwise subdued market for venture capital funding, particularly for technology companies, amid rising interest rates and increased investor focus on profitability. Last month, Anthropic, another AI startup which has received backing from Alphabet Inc's (GOOGL.O) Google, also raised $450 million in a new round.

Persons: Cohere, Aidan Gomez, Manya Saini, Shounak Dasgupta Organizations: Microsoft, Nvidia, Oracle, Salesforce Ventures, Inovia Capital, Schroders, Thomvest Ventures, ChatGPT, Google, Thomson Locations: Bengaluru

☆ Nvidia invests in Google-linked generative A.I. startup Cohere
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-08 | by ( Natalie Rose Goldberg | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +4 min

Cohere, an enterprise-focused generative artificial intelligence startup, has raised $270 million in a Series C round of venture capital which includes AI giant Nvidia as an investor. In the new Cohere round, Oracle and Salesforce were also investors. Cohere is one of the companies that the new Salesforce Ventures generative AI fund is investing in. "We want to build that toolkit that's accessible to any dev," co-founder and CEO Aidan Gomez told CNBC in June 2022. Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang expressed confidence in Cohere, saying in a press release announcing the funding, "The team at Cohere has made foundational contributions to generative AI.

Persons: OpenAI, Cohere, Aidan Gomez, Gomez, Nick Frosst, Jensen Huang, DTCP Organizations: Nvidia, Oracle, Microsoft, CNBC, Google, Google Research, Inovia Capital, Schroders, Thomvest Ventures, Ventures Locations: CoreWeave, Cohere

☆ Microsoft-backed identification verification startup Onfido acquires US counterpart Airside for undisclosed fee
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-22 | by ( Callum Burroughs | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

British digital identity startup Onfido has made its second acquisition. The TPG Growth-backed firm has purchased US counterpart Airside for an undisclosed sum. British digital identity company Onfido has made its second acquisition to date, snapping up US counterpart Airside for an undisclosed fee. Onfido boss Tuchen said Airside solved a "critical problem" that will change how people prove their identities. "To date, digital identity has evolved by digitizing the process of identity verification in the physical world," he said.

☆ AI startup cloud deals by Microsoft, Google and Amazon ring 'accounting alarm bells' across Silicon Valley over revenue 'round-tripping'
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-19 | by ( Eugene Kim | Stephanie Palazzolo | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +10 min

Some investors question whether these arrangements are artificially juicing cloud revenue growth. When Microsoft announced a multibillion-dollar investment in OpenAI earlier this year, the deal made Azure the ChatGPT-maker's "exclusive cloud provider." There's another deal in the works with similar attributes involving Runway AI and a major cloud company. But they are drawing more scrutiny lately because they could artificially inflate cloud revenue, a key driver of growth for Microsoft, Google, and Amazon, according to Ted Mortonson, managing director of financial-services firm Baird. Is OpenAI a regular cloud customer that is getting no investment money from Microsoft?

☆ Airwallex expands to Israel, seeks cyber security acquisitions
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-09 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

Founded in Australia, the financial technology company said its Israeli operations, which will begin on Thursday, would be a first step towards expanding across Europe, the Middle East and Africa in 2023. Or Liban, who will head the company's Israel operations, said the country's high-tech ecosystem, in which startups look to be global from the outset, was a main factor in expanding to Tel Aviv. "There's quite a lot of startups that might be relevant for our mergers and acquisition strategy, namely around cyber security, fraud detection, threat prevention. He noted that while there were no deals currently in the works, there were many opportunities for the company. Reporting by Steven Scheer; Editing by Bernadette BaumOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

☆ Want in on the AI boom? These 8 high-quality stocks are already ahead of the pack
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-30 | by ( Paulina Likos | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +13 min

AI-powered technology companies Microsoft Microsoft arguably pushed AI into the mainstream with its unexpected release of its new AI-powered search engine Bing. During its annual conference for developers earlier this month, Nvidia demonstrated the fundamental importance of its role in facilitating the usage AI applications. Also unveiled were four new chips designed specifically for inferencing , which are optimized for various new generative AI applications. To facilitate these operations, AMD provides machine learning and deep learning systems which offer higher-performance computing capabilities to accelerate AI applications. Qualcomm Qualcomm (QCOM) is focused on making AI technology on-device processing more efficient across different industries and products.

Powering AI Dungeon's text-generation software was the GPT language technology offered by the Microsoft -backed AI research lab OpenAI. The high cost of training and "inference" — actually running — large language models is a structural cost that differs from previous computing booms. Many entrepreneurs see risks in relying on potentially subsidized AI models that they don't control and merely pay for on a per-use basis. Companies making the foundation models, semiconductor makers, and startups all see business opportunities in reducing the price of running AI software. "Latitude is going to continue to evaluate all AI models to be sure we have the best game out there."

☆ Quantum computing software startup Q-CTRL raises $27.4 mln
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-31 | by ( Jane Lanhee Lee | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

OAKLAND, Calif., Jan 31 (Reuters) - Sydney-based startup Q-CTRL, whose software helps run quantum computers more accurately, said on Tuesday it raised $27.4 million with Salesforce Ventures joining as a new investor. Billions of dollars have been invested to prepare for the moment quantum computers can outperform classical computers on important tasks as those could be industry changing, experts say. Several quantum computer makers say they will have over a thousand qubits in the next one to two years. Q-CTRL's software helps see through some of that static to increase the chances of reading the right answer from the quantum machine. It works with both quantum computer hardware and software makers, including IBM (IBM.N), IONQ (IONQ.N), and Classiq.

☆ Actor Matthew McConaughey and musician Will.i.am are often involved in company strategy discussions at Salesforce, report says
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-25 | by ( Sawdah Bhaimiya | Jyoti Mann | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Matthew McConaughey and Will.i.am have taken part in corporate strategy discussions at Salesforce, the FT reported. The FT reported, citing a source familiar with the matter, that actor McConaughey and musician and producer Will.i.am are often included in business conversations. McConaughey, meanwhile, has been heavily involved in Salesforce's advertising in recent years, including appearing in its 2022 Super Bowl commercial. According to a different source cited by the FT, McConaughey and Will.i.am are only involved in informal conversations in the business, not meetings around corporate strategy. Salesforce did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Insider about Will.i.am and McConaughey's apparent involvement in corporate discussions.

☆ Pitch Decks That Advertising Tech Startups Used to Raise Millions
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-10 | by ( Business Insider | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +19 min

Check out these pitch decks that they've used to sell their vision and raise millions from private equity and VC investors. Blocking ad fraudAdtech startup Lunio, announced a $15 million Series A funding round in September 2022. In May 2022, the software-as-a-service startup raised a $30 million Series B round, led by Insight Partners. Marketing in the metaverseAnima, an augmented-reality startup, raised a $3 million funding round from investors in Janury. He raised $50 million in Series D after closing a $34 million Series C last year, bringing its total raised to $100 million.

☆ Schneider Electric-Backed Venture Firm to Launch $520 Million Fund
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-17 | by ( Angus Loten | ) www.wsj.com time to read: +5 min

To date, SE Ventures has 30 active investments, including climate and industrial tech ventures, a pace it expects to accelerate with the new fund, he said. About 70% have struck a commercial partnership with Schneider Electric, the company said. SE Ventures first invested in AutoGrid in the company’s Series D fundraising round in 2019. Mr. Hodson said through SE Ventures, Schneider Electric has a good record of targeting investments to areas where it wants to expand. “There’s definitely a market reality where there is a large degree of uncertainty,” Mr. Chaturvedy said.

☆ Check out the pitch document martech startup Primer used to raise $12 million from Elon Musk's top advisor, Salesforce Ventures, and others
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-16 | by ( Elizabeth Pham Janowski | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Marketing tech startup Primer wants to help business-to-business marketers make sense of fragmented data sources. The company just raised a $12 million Series A round, led by Craft Ventures. Primer's tools allow marketers to apply filters across all these datasets to search for more targeted audiences. With Primer's tools, companies are able to hone in on hyper-specific audiences — like women founders with stores on Shopify, or brand managers who work in the media industry. Scroll down for key slides from the Notion document that Primer used to raise its funds.

☆ Read exclusive 13-slide pitch deck data startup Alation used to raise $123 million from investors like Databricks, Dell, and Thoma Bravo
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-02 | by ( Matthew Lynley | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Data startup Alation announced it raised $123 million at a more than $1.7 billion valuation. There are also smaller companies in the data cataloging space including firms like Metaphor Data, Acryl Data, and Stemma. Data tools like Alation, however, have been able to still grow and find financing, Sangani said. "When you have to make hard choices you need good data, and that logic extends to data tools," Sangani said. Databricks and Snowflake are also co-investors in data collaboration tool Hex, $900 million machine learning startup Tecton, and $4.2 billion data juggernaut Dbt Labs.

☆ Women in venture capital are writing the rules of maternity leave and bending the male-dominated culture to their will
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-31 | by ( Melia Russell | Madeline Renbarger | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +13 min

And with more women entering the male-dominated venture industry, firms are being forced to craft maternity leave policies on the fly to accommodate new mothers. Forty years ago, the clubby male world of venture capital admitted so few women that maternity leave as a benefit was effectively nonexistent. "There is no playbook about how to take maternity leave or raise a family while also accelerating your career as an investor." Lux CapitalLike in many male-dominated industries, maternity leave as a benefit for investors doesn't come up in conversation until someone needs it. Though, the best policies, investors said, give women choices about how they operate on leave, rather than prescribing a one-size-fits-all leave.

Insider asked top VCs what cybersecurity startups excited them the most this year. In turn, venture-capital firms are pouring billions of dollars into cybersecurity startups to help keep businesses secure. Additionally, VCs told Insider that cybersecurity isn't an area where companies are likely to cut spending in a downturn. Insider asked several VCs to pick the most promising cybersecurity startups both in and out of their portfolios. Here are the cybersecurity startups investors say are worth betting on, from least to most capital raised:

☆ Venture Capitalists to Tech Startups: Embrace the Downturn
▼ + stars: | 2022-09-20 | by ( Isabelle Bousquette | ) www.wsj.com time to read: +2 min

Enterprise tech startups are continuing to innovate amid tighter economic conditions, fueled by demand from companies who fear underinvestment in tech could lose them market share, venture partners said. PREVIEWAs CIOs and companies continue putting dollars into those areas, enterprise technology startups are leaning in to meet that demand, the venture partners said. If anything, the tighter economic conditions are making entrepreneurs even hungrier, Mr. Kayyal said. “Obviously, we’re in an uncertain economy, but we see the innovation,” Mr. Kayyal said. We’re gonna see pullback, and we’re gonna see winners and losers in that pullback,” said Mr. Wall.

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