Last week it was reported flea giant Nvidia, Salesforce Companies 1 And Cisco all participated in a $450 million investment for a Toronto-based AI startup Join. The same day, Cisco and its investment arm — Cisco Investments – made the news when launched a billion-dollar AI investment fund.
These remarkable machinations of some of the biggest names in tech are just the latest examples of these corporate giants’ desire to be leaders in the generative AI sector at best – and at worst not to take late.
So far this year, among the handful of tech titans who have invested big money in space, Microsoft and Nvidia — along with their respective venture arms — are among the leaders in investing in venture-backed AI-related startups, according to Crunchbase data. However, others like Google And Data bricks are not far behind and may be winning.
Let’s take a look at Big Tech and how they invest their money.
Nvidia
Of course, no company has been as successful in the AI revolution as Nvidia (maybe too successful if the government has anything to say about it – but we’ll get to that). The company saw its market capitalization explode to nearly $3 billion as its profits beat forecasts.
The company spent some of the money that poured in, investing in 10 rounds involving venture capital-backed AI companies this year alone, according to Crunchbase. data. These deals include seven rounds of over $100 million, including:
- Participate in Evolving AIit’s big Billion dollar funding round led by Accelerate which valued the data labeling and assessment startup at a staggering $13.8 billion. The new financing also included investments of Meta And Amazon
- Participating in Sunnyvale, California, FigureIt is would have a huge funding round of $675 million at a pre-money valuation of around $2 billion. The company is developing AI-enhanced robots that it hopes will be able to perform dangerous tasks and alleviate labor shortages.
- Based in Paris Mistral AIthe $640 million round – a mix of debt and equity – amounting to $6 billion, according to a Financial Times report.
The venture capital arm of the company, NVenturesalso joined the negotiating group. She was involved in four deals this year, the largest being an $85 million Series C for an AI-powered agricultural robotics company. Carbon robotics.
Last year, Nvidia closed 22 funding deals in the AI space itself, as well as 10 more through NVentures.
Microsoft
Of course, it was early last year that Microsoft made the loudest blow in the AI arms race: agreeing to a multi-year, multi-billion dollar investment in OpenAIthe startup behind artificial intelligence tools ChatGPT and DALL-E for one reported 10 billion dollars.
Since then, Microsoft has continued to make significant waves when it comes to investing in AI.
The biggest was his huge A strategic investment of 1.5 billion dollars in an artificial intelligence company based in the United Arab Emirates G42 take a minority stake in the startup.
However, that hasn’t been the only deal the Widows developer has made this year. The company closed a quartet of deals – per Crunchbase data – while its venture capital branch is still very active, M12did Seven.
Three of the four deals she was involved in were large – at least $675 million – including a $1.05 billion round for a London-based self-driving car startup. Wayveas well as the aforementioned round figure.
All this is not even mentioned Microsoft’s March deal with Inflection AI paying the startup $650 million to license its AI software and hire most of its staff. The deal – seemingly designed in a way to bypass regulatory hurdles since it is not officially an acquisition – once again showed the tech titan’s insatiable appetite for all things AI .
The biggest contract M12 has been involved in since then was a $80 million funding round for Palo Alto, based in California Foundrywhich develops a public cloud specifically designed for ML workloads.
Last year, Microsoft and M12 made a total of 21 investments in AI-related startups.
Not far behind these AI giants is Google and its venture capital arm, GVwho together completed seven transactions involving venture-backed startups.
However, unlike Microsoft and Nvidia, Google’s deals have been more modest so far this year. No round he has invested in has exceeded $57 million. In fact, Google itself has only invested in seed rounds for AI-related startups.
GV probably made the most interesting deal, co-leading a $27.5 million Series A for WitnessAIa startup specializing in guardrails to make AI safer and more usable.
There is more
Several other major tech companies, along with their investment arms, like Qualcomm And Sales force have participated in a few funding deals this year for AI-related startups, but not at the pace of the group above.
However, one still-private company has made a lot of noise in the investment space as it has made no secret of its AI intentions. Data bricks just last month announcement a new Databricks AI fund as part of Databricks Companies.
The venture capital arm was already involved in eight offers this year – some quite large – before announcing the fund.
Databricks Ventures participated in the $200 million, Series D for AI-enhanced work assistants and enterprise search startups Glean which valued the startup at $2.2 billion. He was also involved in starting AI research Perplexity AIthe $73.6 million Series B led by IPV – which also included companies like Nvidia and Jeff Bezos.
A possible warning
While there are no signs of business investment in AI slowing down, last week’s news that both Federal Trade Commission and the Ministry of Justice launching investigations into Microsoft, OpenAI and Nvidia could help cool the AI investment philosophy.
While there is no evidence so far that the DOJ will review Nvidia’s investment transactions, it has been reported the FTC will investigate Microsoft’s relationship with OpenAI, as well as from Microsoft actions in the Inflexion AI situation.
The two investigations could lead both companies to pause their investments in startups – although that is not the focus of the investigations – until it is clear how the regulators’ actions may affect their businesses, if at all. at all.
It could also cause other large companies to reconsider certain transactions, so as not to be the next to face increased scrutiny.
If that happens, venture financing could see another lull. In MayAI companies raised 40% of venture capital funding for the month, with $12.5 billion invested in more than 250 companies, according to Basic Crunch data.
With AI currently underpinning venture capital investments, the last thing many in the business – or AI – sector would want to see is the demise of big tech.
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Illustration: Dom Guzman
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