The former head of the IBM “supercomputer” project, David Ferrucci, raised $59.95m for his startup developing generative artificial intelligence (AI), Elemental Cognition AI.
According to the financial filing, the funds were raised through the sale of securities to 17 investors. The document also mentions plans to seek an additional $5.75m.
New York–based Elemental develops AI technologies with “enhanced reasoning capabilities.” The company has already built two enterprise chatbots — Cogent and Cora. They are aimed at financial applications, logistics, and automating scientific research.
On the startup’s site it says that in its products the project uses a hybrid language model that possesses “specific knowledge and the ability to think logically.”
The CEO of Elemental Cognition David Ferrucci spent 18 years at IBM, the United States technology and AI-focused corporation, and was also the director of applied artificial intelligence at Bridgewater Associates.
The management team also includes other top executives from IBM and Bridgewater, including David Shepler, Eric Brown and Mike Barborak.
IBM itself has faced difficulties of late. In 2022 the company sold its Watson Health unit to Francisco Partners.
In August 2023, the South Korean telecoms giant SK Telecom invested $100m in the AI startup Anthropic. The two companies have entered into a partnership to create a large language model.