{"id":83887,"date":"2023-09-01T16:43:01","date_gmt":"2023-09-01T13:43:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/?p=83887"},"modified":"2025-09-12T13:56:04","modified_gmt":"2025-09-12T10:56:04","slug":"generative-ai-startup-ai21-becomes-a-unicorn-with-a-1-4-billion-valuation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/generative-ai-startup-ai21-becomes-a-unicorn-with-a-1-4-billion-valuation\/","title":{"rendered":"Generative AI startup AI21 becomes a unicorn with a $1.4 billion valuation"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Israeli generative AI project AI21 Labs has closed a Series C financing round of $155 million, valuing the company at $1.4 billion.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/forklog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/Snimok-ekrana-2023-09-01-v-15.59.43.webp\" alt=\"Snimok-ekrana-2023-09-01-v-15.59.43\" class=\"wp-image-214888\"\/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Data: <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/AI21Labs\/status\/1697211212616843727\">X<\/a>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Investors include Google, Nvidia, Walden Catalyst, Pitango, SCB10X, b2venture, Samsung Next, as well as Amnon Shashua, the head of Mobileye and co-founder of the startup.<\/p>\n<p>Total funds raised amount to $283 million, making AI21 Labs one of the largest <span data-descr=\"unofficial label for projects valued at over $1 billion\" class=\"old_tooltip\">unicorns<\/span> in generative AI.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>&#8220;The current round will help the company grow to achieve our goal of developing the next level of artificial intelligence with reasoning capabilities across various fields,&#8221; said Shashua.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>AI21 Labs was founded in 2017 in Tel Aviv and since then has worked on developing large language models (LLMs). In 2020 the company released Wordtune, an AI code-writing tool.<\/p>\n<p>Earlier, Shashua had sold Google two projects: Timeful, a time-management app, and Katango, a social-network friend organizer.<\/p>\n<p>The startup&#8217;s flagship product is AI21 Studio\u2014a platform for building business applications based on the Jurassic text-generating AI model.<\/p>\n<p>The co-founder says AI21&#8217;s solutions outperform competitors on many aspects. He noted that their technologies are built on \\&#8221;some of the largest and most complex LMMs.\\&#8221; In addition, the company&#8217;s neural networks are continually trained on up-to-date databases.<\/p>\n<p>According to The Information, last year OpenAI spent $540 million on developing ChatGPT. AI21 Labs&#8217; internal studies estimate training costs for a generative AI with 1.5 billion parameters at $1.6 million.<\/p>\n<p>In February, reports said that Google <a href=\"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/news\/media-google-invests-300m-in-chatgpt-rival\">invested $300 million<\/a> in the Anthropic AI project.<\/p>\n<p>In May the startup <a href=\"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/news\/ai-startup-anthropic-raises-450-million-from-google-and-other-investors\">raised another $450 million<\/a>. Later, the South Korean telecom giant SK Telecom <a href=\"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/news\/ai-startup-anthropic-secures-100m-from-sk-telecom\">allocated<\/a> additional $100 million to the company under the partnership.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Israeli generative AI project AI21 Labs has closed a Series C financing round of $155 million, valuing the company at $1.4 billion.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":83888,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"select":"1","news_style_id":"1","cryptorium_level":"","_short_excerpt_text":"","creation_source":"","_metatest_mainpost_news_update":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[438,1133],"class_list":["post-83887","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-and-analysis","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-venture-investments"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"views":"21","promo_type":"1","layout_type":"1","short_excerpt":"","is_update":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83887","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=83887"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83887\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":83889,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83887\/revisions\/83889"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/83888"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=83887"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=83887"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=83887"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}