Startup News: Chainalysis uses Coinbase to improve way it gets paid

Chainalysis uses Coinbase to improve way it gets paid

Chainalysis plays a vital role in the cryptocurrency ecosystem. The New York City-based private company offers regulators and law-enforcement agencies throughout the world special investigation software to analyze the blockchain’s public ledger.

But the company known for its role in helping to detect illicit crypto activity often gets paid for its services in cryptocurrency. To help improve its process for getting paid, Chainalysis announced June 12th that it is partnering with Coinbase Commerce, which is the division of crypto exchange company Coinbase that is responsible for helping merchants accept cryptocurrency payments.

“We’ve integrated Coinbase Commerce so that our customers can conveniently settle their invoices using a wide range of digital assets,” said Chainalysis in a press release. “By offering this new payment option, we are supporting the evolving needs of our customers.”

Founded in 2014, Chainalysis’s last known valuation, as of May 2022, was $8.54 billion.

Salesforce’s Venture Arm is doubling down on generative AI

Salesforce is known for its dominant role in the customer relationship management (CRM) software market. But like other major U.S. tech companies such as Alphabet and Microsoft, Salesforce is upping its stake in the fast-emerging field of generative artificial intelligence.

The company announced on June 12th that it is doubling the size of its Generative AI Fund – increasing it from $250 million to $500 million – as part of its desire to “bolster the AI startup ecosystem and spark the development of responsible generative AI.” The company also said that it was adding two AI private companies – Humane and Tribble – to the list of AI startups receiving funding.

“We are already seeing AI change the way the world works, and we’re excited to build on the momentum of our Generative AI Fund,” said Paul Drews, a managing partner with Salesforce Ventures, in a statement accompanying the company press release.

The Generative AI Fund has already invested in several generative AI companies, including You.com and Hearth. Most recently, the fund announced further investments in Anthropic and Cohere.

Databricks says yearly revenues jumped 60% to $1B

Databricks, a data analytics startup with a hefty valuation, told Bloomberg that it now generates $1 billion in annual revenue and has diversified its business with new products and tools for artificial intelligence.

A company spokesman said that sales of the San Francisco-based company increased by more than 60% in the fiscal year ending in January 2023.

In an interview with Bloomberg TV, Databricks CEO Ali Ghodsi said that demand for the company’s products is being driven by companies looking to get data organized in order to take advantage of AI and to reduce high cloud bills, he said.

The company was valued at $37.89 billion as of August 2021. In April, the company announced that it had released Dolly 2, the latest version of its text-generating chatbot comparable to Open AI’s ChatGPT. The release of Dolly 2 comes 12 months after the release of the original Dolly chatbot.