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☆ Databricks closes in on multibillion funding round at $55 billion valuation to help employees cash out
▼ + stars: | 2024-11-26 | by ( Kate Rooney | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +3 min

San Francisco-based Databricks is raising at least another $5 billion in its latest funding round — though it could raise up to $8 billion given the round is ongoing — according to several sources who asked not to be named because the discussions were private. The latest raise would value the company at $55 billion and could top the largest round of the year by OpenAI. The latest funding is designed to help Databricks employees sell shares, a source said. One source said the funding round makes Databricks' highly anticipated public debut less urgent. This summer, it acquired MosaicML, a $1.3 billion software startup that focuses on large language models that can churn out natural-sounding text.

Persons: Ali Ghodsi, Databricks, OpenAI, Andreessen Horowitz, Baillie Gifford, Snowflake, Ghodsi Organizations: Databricks Inc, Bloomberg Technology, CNBC, OpenAI, Walgreens, Nvidia, Capital, Fidelity, Insight Partners, Tiger Global Locations: San Francisco

☆ Databricks acquires data optimization startup Tabular in fresh challenge to Snowflake
▼ + stars: | 2024-06-04 | by ( Jordan Novet | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +4 min

Data analytics software maker Databricks said in a statement on Tuesday that it's acquiring Tabular, a startup that helps optimize data stored in the cloud. The gesture could help Databricks more quickly bring out products as it faces competition from Snowflake and other entities. Databricks is paying over $1 billion to buy Tabular, Databricks CEO Ali Ghodsi said in an interview. Snowflake was also bidding on Tabular, as was Confluent , a person familiar with the matter told CNBC. Focusing more on Iceberg tables might allow Databricks to take business from Snowflake clients that embrace the format.

Persons: Ali Ghodsi, Databricks, Snowflake, Ryan Blue, Dan Weeks, Okta, Mike Scarpelli, Morgan Stanley, Ghodsi, Andreessen Horowitz, Frank Slootman's, Jefferies, Brent Thill Organizations: Databricks, Summit, Street Journal, CNBC, Developers, Netflix, Salesforce, Amazon, Services, Monday, Zetta Venture Partners Locations: San Francisco, Snowflake, Delta

☆ A wave of AI 'acquihires' is coming. Here's who could be looking for deals.
▼ + stars: | 2024-05-30 | by ( Rebecca Torrence | Riddhi Kanetkar | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +8 min

But the tech giant's play underscores the market's demand for tech talent — and venture capitalists expect a wave of "acquihires" to hit the AI ecosystem later this year. M&A dealmaking among AI startups is already off to a strong start this year, with 55 exits recorded in Q1 of 2024, per Crunchbase data. AdvertisementThe majority of AI startups are overpriced, said Konstantin Vinogradov, general partner at Runa Capital. AI startups with revenue in the single-digit millions that raised money at unicorn valuations, Dash said, might not even have that option. Those deals don't make sense for buyers, he said, which could lead Big Tech companies or other AI startups to poach their talent instead.

Persons: —, Inflection's, Ayangar, Konstantin Vinogradov, Somesh Dash, overshadowing, Shmuel Chafets, Sivesh Sivakumar, Shaun Johnson, Naveen Rao, Sivakumar, Johnson, PhotoRoom, Aravind Srinivas, Mike Smeed, Chafets, Dash, they'll Organizations: Service, Microsoft, Business, Investors, Runa, Big Tech, Apple, Target, Ventures, Accenture, Boston Consulting Group, Intuit, Nike, American Express, Safeway, InMotion Ventures, Disney, Netflix Locations: OpenOcean, Snowflake, Databricks

☆ Ali Partovi learned to code in a war zone. Now, he's trying to build a new kind of venture fund.
▼ + stars: | 2024-05-06 | by ( Darius Rafieyan | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

download the appSign up to get the inside scoop on today’s biggest stories in markets, tech, and business — delivered daily. But amid the chaos, there was one solid thing in Partovi's life, one thing he knew he could always put in order: computer code. Related storiesNow, Partovi has reached the top echelon of seed investors, ranking 13th on Business Insider's Seed 100 list. 'Neo Scholars'Through his seed-stage fund Neo, Partovi has amassed a formidable portfolio of early-stage investments, including Ramp, Deel, Vanta, MosaicML, and many more. As these "Neo Scholars," as they're known, graduate or drop out to build startups, Neo backs them with money from its investment fund.

Persons: —, Ali Partovi, Saddam Hussein, Partovi's, Hadi, Partovi, Facebook, Uber, There's Erik Goldman, Dropbox, Vanta, There's Ari Steinberg, who's Organizations: Service, Business, Boston University, Sharif University of Technology, Harvard, Microsoft, University, CS, Stanford, Facebook, Airbnb Locations: Tehran, Iran, Iraq, North America, Silicon

☆ Eric Newcomer is bringing his Cerebral Valley AI Summit to New York
▼ + stars: | 2024-04-15 | by ( Darius Rafieyan | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Cerebral Valley New York will be Newcomer's first east coast event. AdvertisementThe Cerebral Valley AI Summit, the generative AI conference created by tech journalist Eric Newcomer and AI startup Volley, will be hosting its first New York event on June 27th. The original Cerebral Valley Summit, held in the Hayes Valley neighborhood of San Francisco in 2023, made headlines for producing one of the largest generative AI acquisitions ever and effectively firing the starting gun on the AI arms race. At the last Cerebral Valley Summit in November, 2023, it was a given that OpenAI had already won the AI battle. At the very first Cerebral Valley AI Summit, Newcomer half-jokingly challenged someone to raise $100 million at the conference.

Persons: —, Eric Newcomer, Mistral, OpenAI, Sam Altman, Altman, Ali Ghodsi, Reid Hoffman, Vinod Khosla, Anthropic, Daniela Amodei Organizations: Service, New, Google Locations: San Francisco, York, New York, Hayes, Francisco, Europe, MosaicML

☆ A new generative AI model could compete with rivals like OpenAI. Say hello to Databricks' DBRX.
▼ + stars: | 2024-03-27 | by ( Lloyd Lee | Darius Rafieyan | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Databricks, a cloud-based data software company, launched a new AI model on Wednesday — and the company says it's faster, cheaper, and more efficient than its larger competitors. The model, called DBRX, comes at a time of fierce competition in the generative AI field. DBRX, available as open source, is the culmination of the company's $1.3 billion purchase of AI startup MosaicML last July, as many of its staffers helped build DBRX. Also, the entire DBRX model has 132 billion parameters, the company said. Ghodsi told BI that a team at Databricks was responsible for filtering copyrighted material from the data used to train DBRX.

Persons: —, Ali Ghodsi, Elon Musk's, Databricks, Ghodsi, Patrick Wendell, Wendell, Naveen Rao Organizations: Service, Business, Google, Microsoft Locations: San Francisco ., Databricks

☆ 2023 has been an AI feeding frenzy, here are the startups that attracted the most investment this year
▼ + stars: | 2023-12-04 | by ( Darius Rafieyan | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +7 min

Despite an overall slump in startup funding, 2023 saw a scramble among investors to pour money into AI and machine learning startups. And the company's star still appears to be rising, despite a messy leadership struggle that recently spilled into public view. Meanwhile OpenAI's perennial rival Anthropic attracted multi-billion dollar investments from both Google and Amazon to fund a competing AI model known as Claude. At the same time legacy companies from John Deere to accounting firm PwC played up their AI bona fides to capitalize on the hype. The list doesn't include startups who have not publicly released the amount of their funding rounds.

Persons: OpenAI, Anthropic, Claude, Databricks, John Deere, PwC, Fresh Organizations: Microsoft, Google, Alpha, Technology, Monogram, Sigma, Lambda, Helsing, Metals, Eagle Eye, Amelia, Asimov, Farmers Business, Harbinger, Prins, Silo, Mistral, Alto, AMP, Management Software, Universal, Coro, Kodiak Robotics, Aerospace, Defense, Sana, Corti, Kyte, Mitra, Tech, Boss Digital Technology, Halcyon, & $ Locations: PitchBook

☆ Databricks, the $43 billion analytics firm, acquires data startup Arcion for $100 million
▼ + stars: | 2023-10-23 | by ( Hayden Field | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +2 min

Databricks has agreed to acquire Arcion, an enterprise data company, for about $100 million, including incentives, CEO Ali Ghodsi told CNBC ahead of an official Monday announcement. The acquisition comes after Databricks announced a $500 million funding round in September at a valuation of $43 billion. Arcion is Databricks' first acquisition since acquiring MosaicML, an AI infrastructure startup specializing in training large language models, for $1.3 billion. It's part of Databricks' AI push, and partly inspired by the tech sector's growing interest in generative AI, which can require a lot of training data. "We think we can make a lot of revenue on this particular acquisition," Ghodsi said.

Persons: Ali Ghodsi, Databricks, Ghodsi, we're, Rajkumar Sen, Miryana Organizations: Databricks Inc, Bloomberg Technology, CNBC, Oracle, Arcion's Locations: San Francisco

☆ Generative AI needs tools to avoid copyright infringement, Databricks' Naveen Rao says — or more companies could meet Napster's fate
▼ + stars: | 2023-10-10 | by ( Ellen Thomas | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Naveen Rao is VP of Generative AI at Databricks and co-founder of LLM-training platform MosaicML. Rao says copyright infringement could prevent companies from successfully monetizing AI. Rao, who oversees generative AI strategy for Databricks after it bought his startup MosaicML for $1.3 billion, likens it to the issue that crushed Napster, the 2000s-era music-sharing platform. "We build tools that enable companies to differentiate their AI from everyone else's and leverage their data uniquely," Rao told Insider. The more people building generative AI technology the better, Rao says.

Persons: Naveen Rao, Rao, —, ChatGPT, Jodi Picoult, George R.R, Martin, OpenAI, he's Organizations: Service, Napster, Apple, iTunes, Thrones, Metallica, Qualcomm, Intel

☆ Cerebral Valley, the AI conference that spawned a $1.3 billion deal, is coming back to San Francisco this year
▼ + stars: | 2023-09-19 | by ( Alistair Barr | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Cerebral Valley, an AI conference run by Eric Newcomer's eponymous publication, just announced its second gathering of 2023. CVAI2 (Cerebral Valley AI Summit version 2.0) will take place on November 15 at the SFJAZZ Center in Hayes Valley, San Francisco. The neighborhood is nicknamed Cerebral Valley these days, due to the plethora of AI startups that have sprouted there. Ali Ghodsi, CEO of Databricks, and Naveen Rao, CEO of MosaicML, met for the first time at the initial Cerebral Valley AI Summit. That's the biggest generative AI startup deal so far, by my counting.

Persons: Vinod Khosla, Reid Hoffman, Adam D'Angelo, Eric Newcomer's, Mustafa Suleyman, Ali Ghodsi, Kanjun Qiu, Chris Lattner, May Habib, Naveen Rao, Jason Warner, Max Child, James Wilsterman, Amjad Masad, Clem Delangue, Emad, Daniela Amodei, Cristobal Valenzuela, Shane Orlick, MosaicML, it's Organizations: SFJAZZ, Service, Industry Locations: Hayes Valley, San Francisco, Wall, Silicon, Jasper

As some high-valued tech startups look to the long-dormant IPO market for their next funding round, Databricks is still finding investors that are happy to keep the company private, at least for now. Databricks, which sells data analytics software, said Thursday that it raised more than $500 million in fresh capital at a $43 billion valuation. Founded in 2013 and based in San Francisco, Databricks last announced funding during the boom market of 2021, at a $38 billion valuation. However, unlike fellow software IPO candidates Canva and Stripe, Databricks has managed to maintain its share price. In the latest round, shares were sold at $73.50 a piece, roughly equal to where they were priced in 2021.

Persons: Databricks, Snowflake, Ali Ghodsi, Headcount Organizations: Nvidia Locations: San Francisco, Databricks

The new round, led by T. Rowe Price, could mark the last round of private funding as the data company gears up for the public market. Chipmaker Nvidia (NVDA.O), another beneficiary of the AI boom, and credit card firm Capital One Financial (COF.N), also participated in the latest funding round. AI, the latest buzzword in the technology space, has captivated the interest of investors from Silicon Valley to Wall Street. Its latest valuation is over 13% more than the $38 billion the San Francisco-based company was worth after its last fundraise in 2021. The company has raised $4 billion since inception.

Persons: Rowe Price, Ali Ghodsi, Ghodsi, Andreessen Horowitz, Baillie Gifford, Morgan, Weeks, Databricks, Niket, Krystal Hu, Dhanya Ann Thoppil Organizations: Nvidia, Reuters, Fidelity Management & Research, Tiger Global, Thomson Locations: Silicon Valley, Wall, Francisco, Bengaluru, Hong Kong

☆ Can AI save commercial real estate in San Francisco?
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-10 | by ( Samantha Delouya | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +7 min

In an aerial view, cars drive by the San Francisco skyline as they cross the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge on October 27, 2022 in San Francisco, California. Alexander Quinn, senior director of research at commercial real estate company JLL, said his firm sees bright spots in San Francisco’s commercial real estate market as AI companies drive office leasing demand. A shopper exits the Westfield San Francisco Centre shopping mall in San Francisco, California, US, on Tuesday, June 13, 2023. The US Census Bureau reports an estimated 35% of employees in San Francisco and San Jose continue to work from home. “I think the crash is coming, and it hasn’t happened yet,” he added, referring to commercial real estate prices.

Persons: Naveen Rao, CBRE, Justin Sullivan, it’s, ” Rao, San, Alexander Quinn, JLL, ” Quinn, Rao, OpenAI, ”, “ There’s, MosaicML, Quinn, “, Francisco’s, David Paul Morris, Henrique Dubugras, ” Michael Tannenbaum, Tannenbaum, Hans Hansson Organizations: CNN, San, Westfield, San Francisco Centre, Westfield San Francisco, Bloomberg, Getty, London, US, “ Locations: San Francisco, Southern California, Francisco, Oakland, San Francisco , California, ”, “ San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles, city’s, San Francisco’s Union, Coresight, Westfield San Francisco Centre, California, Francisco’s, San Jose, decamping, United States

☆ AMD's AI chips could match Nvidia's offerings, software firm says
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-30 | by ( Stephen Nellis | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +3 min

June 30 (Reuters) - Artificial intelligence chips from Advanced Micro Devices (AMD.O) are about 80% as fast as those from Nvidia Corp (NVDA.O), with a future path to matching their performance, according a Friday report by an AI software firm. Nvidia dominates the market for the powerful chips that are used to create ChatGPT and other AI services that have swept through the technology industry in recent months. That prompted MosaicML, an AI startup acquired for $1.3 billion earlier this week, to conduct a test comparing between AI chips from AMD and Nvidia. Tang said that MosaicML used its tools, the PyTorch and AMD software to train a large language model without having to make any changes to its code base. If developers can find AMD's chips at the right price, "you can already switch to these today they're essentially interchangeable" with Nvidia chips, Tang said.

Persons: MosaicML, Hanlin Tang, Tang, OpenAI, Stephen Nellis, Aurora Ellis Organizations: Micro Devices, Nvidia Corp, Nvidia, AMD, MosaicML, Meta, Thomson Locations: San Francisco

☆ Databricks Strikes $1.3 Billion Deal for Generative AI Startup MosaicML
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-26 | by ( Angus Loten | Belle Lin | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. Distribution and use of this material are governed by our Subscriber Agreement and by copyright law. For non-personal use or to order multiple copies, please contact Dow Jones Reprints at 1-800-843-0008 or visit www.djreprints.com. https://www.wsj.com/articles/databricks-strikes-1-3-billion-deal-for-generative-ai-startup-mosaicml-fdcefc06

Persons: Dow Jones

REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File PhotoJune 26 (Reuters) - Databricks said on Monday it had agreed to acquire artificial intelligence (AI) startup MosaicML in a mostly stock deal valued at $1.3 billion, marking Databricks' latest efforts to build an ecosystem for enterprises to use open-source AI models. San Francisco-based MosaicML provides software tools designed to make it cheaper to carry out AI work, which often involves training AI algorithms on huge troves of data using expensive computer chips. Databricks said the deal would combine its AI technology with MosaicML's language-model platform, allowing businesses a "simple, fast way to retain control, security, and ownership over their valuable data without high costs". Databricks, which sells software tools for building AI systems, has been an advocate for open-source models, which it argues could rival the models players like OpenAI and Google are offering. Both Databricks and MosaicML have released open-source foundation models, which is the category of core technology behind services like OpenAI's ChatGPT.

Persons: Dado Ruvic, Databricks, MosaicML, Tiyashi Datta, Krystal Hu, Pooja Desai, Mark Potter Organizations: REUTERS, Google, Microsoft Corp, Lux Capital, Thomson Locations: San Francisco, Bengaluru, Toronto

☆ MosaicML acquisition will allow us to democratize A.I. for startups, says Databricks CEO Ali Ghodsi
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-26 | 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 EmailMosaicML acquisition will allow us to democratize A.I. for startups, says Databricks CEO Ali GhodsiAli Ghodsi, Databricks CEO, joins 'Closing Bell Overtime' to discuss the company's acquisition of A.I. company MosaicML for $1.3B.

Persons: democratize, Ali Ghodsi Ali Ghodsi Organizations: A.I

☆ Opinion | Beyond the ‘Matrix’ Theory of the Human Mind
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-28 | by ( Ezra Klein | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +3 min

“We can produce more information,” Mark said. Our processing capability is the bottleneck.”Email and chat systems like Slack offer useful analogies here. Few have thought through the costs that will impose on those who are supposed to respond to all this new text. Our societywide obsession with speed and efficiency has given us a flawed model of human cognition that I’ve come to think of as the Matrix theory of knowledge. But that misses much of what’s really happening when we spend nine hours reading a biography.

But Nvidia has created variants of its chips for the Chinese market that are slowed down to meet U.S. rules. Even the slowed Nvidia chips represent an improvement for Chinese firms. The back-and-forth between government and industry exposes the U.S. challenge of slowing China's progress in high tech without hurting U.S. companies. Chip industry sources said that was an effective action. Some in the AI industry believe that is still plenty of speed.

☆ MosaicML launches new service in bid to challenge OpenAI on price
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-03 | by ( Stephen Nellis | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

May 3 (Reuters) - MosaicML, an artificial intelligence startup founded by former Intel Corp (INTC.O) executives and academic researchers, released on Wednesday two new products aimed at beating industry giants such as OpenAI on price. The company makes money selling the tools to firms that want to develop their own customized AI systems. But on Wednesday, MosaicML announced several new services that will compete more directly with companies like OpenAI or Anthropic, which build AI systems and then charge for access to them. MosaicML is offering those services at a cost it says is as much as 15 times lower than rival services. They have assurances that the model that's built on the private data is owned by them," Rao said.

☆ 44 of the most promising generative-artificial-intelligence startups of 2023, according to investors
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-24 | by ( Stephanie Palazzolo | Samantha Stokes | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

We asked investors to name the most promising generative-AI startups of 2023. VCs were asked to name startups in their portfolios and ones with which they had no financial ties. This past year has seen doom and gloom for most of the tech world, but a small, rapidly growing group of startups have seen a renaissance. In the model layer, third-party and open-source providers like OpenAI and Stability AI train AI models that startups can build upon. Insider asked 22 top artificial-intelligence and machine-learning investors to nominate the early-stage generative-AI startups within this ecosystem they believe show the most promise.

☆ 44 of the most promising generative-artificial-intelligence startups of 2023, according to VCs
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-10 | by ( Stephanie Palazzolo | Samantha Stokes | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

☆ OpenAI has become synonymous with the generative AI boom, but it has a weakness that its competitors are already starting to exploit
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-06 | by ( Emilia David | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

But while OpenAI became synonymous with AI, its competition hasn't sat still. Other AI model makers see a growing opportunity in the concerns around OpenAI, and want to pounce on the opportunity. Amazon, not one to miss a promotional activity, then directed its programmers to use its own AI model called CodeWhisperer. OpenAI's determination to dominate the field meant it created a more general AI model that others could add on. However, it also leaves an opening in the market for more specific AI models that organizations in sensitive industries will flock to.

☆ Dozens of AI enthusiasts gathered in San Francisco's Cerebral Valley for a summit on Thursday. Here are the top 3 takeaways from the event.
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-31 | by ( Stephanie Palazzolo | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

Dozens of AI enthusiasts gathered in SF's Cerebral Valley on Thursday for Eric Newcomer's AI summit. The handful of streets between San Francisco's Fillmore and Mission neighborhoods have been called a variety of names in recent times — Cerebral Valley, Bayes Valley, Hayes Valley — but on a Thursday morning in March, they were the home for dozens of AI enthusiasts, founders, and VCs looking to learn more about the space at independent journalist Eric Newcomer's Cerebral Valley AI Summit. The model to rule them allWith representation from several OpenAI competitors, including Anthropic, Adept, and Stability AI, a common question during panels was how the landscape of AI model providers would shake out. Others, like Stability AI founder and CEO Emad Mostaque, claimed that the question of AI models went beyond performance or cost to issues around transparency and accessibility. The future of codingWith the recent AI boom, a flock of startups have emerged to help developers build AI and non-AI applications.

Executives across the technology sector are talking about how to operate AI like ChatGPT while accounting for the high expense. What makes this form of AI pricier than conventional search is the computing power involved. Still, footing the bill is one of two main reasons why search and social media giants with billions of users have not rolled out an AI chatbot overnight, said Paul Daugherty, Accenture's chief technology officer. Technology experts also said a workaround is applying smaller AI models to simpler tasks, which Alphabet is exploring. The company said this month a "smaller model" version of its massive LaMDA AI technology will power its chatbot Bard, requiring "significantly less computing power, enabling us to scale to more users."

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