Startup Trends: AI firms accelerate innovation
The excitement and innovation of the AI sector doesn’t stop with the creator of chatbot ChatGPT. And while OpenAI continues to garner investor and media interest with improvements to its generative AI technology, companies such as Anthropic, Groq and Hugging Face have made meaningful moves on their own in recent weeks.
Anthropic
While OpenAI’s ChatGPT may be one of the most well-known chatbot in the U.S., Anthropic has also gained millions of users in the past few months with its own chatbot, Claude.
On May 1, San Francisco-based Anthropic announced two new initiatives: the company’s first ever for-pay chatbot offering specifically for enterprises and a free iPhone app featuring Claude for regular consumers, according to CNBC. The company also has plans to introduce an Android-compatible app.
In late March, Amazon announced a $2.75 billion investment in Anthropic, the second tranche of a multi-billion dollar commitment totaling $4 billion.
Anthropic’s Forge Price™ is $30 as of May 14, 2024 which implies a valuation of $18.5 billion.
OpenAI
Meanwhile, OpenAI isn’t resting on its laurels. The company is rapidly signing licensing deals with media companies whose content serves as data to train ChatGPT’s AI models. In late April, Reuters reported that OpenAI had signed a deal with the U.K.-based The Financial Times. Similar licensing deals have been inked with other media companies including Germany’s Axel Spring and France’s Le Monde and Spain’s Prisa Media.
And in late March, OpenAI and its largest investor Microsoft reported that they plan to launch a data center that would include a supercomputer to power OpenAI’s artificial intelligence efforts, according to tech news site The Information. The reporting in The Information said that Microsoft would “likely” be responsible for financing the project, “which would be 100 times more costly than some of today’s biggest data centers.”
OpenAI’s Forge Price™ is $171.96 as of May 14, 2024 which implies a valuation of $99.73 billion.
Groq
Groq has developed its own niche in the AI space. The company produces chips that power generative AI models.
In early March, online trade news site CryptoSlate reported that Groq’s dedicated language processing unit has set a new record in processing efficiency for large language models. In a recent study conducted by research firm ArtificialAnalysis.ai, Groq outperformed the other participants across several performance metrics, including total response time.
The Mountain View, Calif.-based company also announced in early March that it is acquiring AI company Definitive Intelligence and tapping the acquired company’s Co-Founder and CEO, Sunny Madra, to lead a new business unit, GroqCloud.
Groq’s Forge Price™ is $11.54 as of May 14, 2024 which implies a valuation of $1.33 billion.
Hugging Face
Like Groq, New York-based Hugging Face has carved out its own special place in AI. The company serves as an electronic gathering place for AI software developers who use the company’s platform to host AI models, train them, and even browse and use models created by other people.
In early April, Hugging Face and the users of its “hub” got a boost from publicly-traded Cloudflare, which bills itself as the leading cloud connectivity company. Cloudflare announced in a press release that developers using New York City-based Hugging Face can now “deploy AI applications on Cloudflare’s global network in one simple click directly from Hugging Face.
Hugging Face’s Forge Price™ is $25.25 as of May 14, 2024 which implies a valuation of $4.57 billion.
About the Author
John Kimelman is a veteran journalist who has worked at Barron’s and CNBC covering such topics as investing and commercial banking. Mr. Kimelman has received compensation from Forge Global, Inc. for authoring this article. Read more from John.