From left: Yoav Shoham, Ori Goshen and Amnon Shashua. Image: AI21
Founded by Israeli entrepreneurs Amnon Shashua, Yoav Shoham and Ori Goshen in 2017, AI21 was one of the first start-ups to bring generative AI to the masses.
Israeli generative AI start-up AI21 Labs has completed a $208m funding round backed by some big players including Intel Capital and Comcast Ventures.
This is the second time in less than three months that AI21 has raised significant funding, after raising $155m in a Series C round backed by Google and Nvidia that valued the start-up at $1.4bn.
The continuation of this Series C round now brings the company’s total capital raised to $336m.
Headquartered in Tel Aviv, AI21 Labs builds advanced large language models (LLM) and natural language processing (NLP) technologies to meet growing demand for generative AI applications from enterprise consumers including Fortune 100 companies such as Amazon.
The start-up was founded by CEO Amnon Shashua, who previously founded Intel’s self-driving car unit Mobileye, and fellow Israeli tech entrepreneurs Yoav Shoham and Ori Goshen in 2017. At the time, AI21 was one of the first start-ups brining generative AI to the masses.
Its proprietary Jurassic-2 foundation model powers AI21 Studio, the company’s flagship developer platform for building custom text-based business applications. It also develops Wordtune, a multilingual reading and writing assistant much like Grammarly.
Co-CEO Goshen said that the latest investment will enable AI21 to “increase mindshare that one size doesn’t fit all” as enterprises look for unique AI partners that understand their specific needs.
“Mass deployment of AI requires deep understanding of high-performance language models that can deliver better value and impact. Our approach is about designing AI with purpose, making it significantly more efficient than building from scratch, and much more cost effective,” he said.
Shoham, a professor emeritus of computer science at Stanford University, said that an “increasing shift” in discussion to an AI systems approach will “define the next era in computing”.
“By adopting a more comprehensive systems approach, our AI enriches LLMs with knowledge and reasoning, in addition to statistical inference,” said Shoham.
“This enables us to define a flexible architecture with multiple LLMs, complemented by discrete knowledge and reasoning modules.”
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