AI Business
Funding, acquisitions, market moves and business models.
How Smartly.io Secured $20M in Secondary Funding to Fuel U.S. Expansion Without an Early IPO
Smartly.io's $20 million secondary funding round in 2017 from Highland Europe enabled employee equity rewards and aggressive U.S. expansion without premature IPO pressure.
Deep Tech Startup Exits Slump Amid Rising Rates, Yet AI and Climate Innovations Spark Cautious Hope
Expanded analysis of deep‑tech startup exits, incorporating macro‑economic pressures, sector definitions, Q3 2023 rebound, AI and climate exit categories, and M&A activity.
Microsoft's Bonsai Acquisition: Reinforcement Learning Meets Azure
Expanded article detailing Microsoft's acquisition of Bonsai, its reinforcement learning technology, strategic implications for Azure, impact on developers, new clients, revenue growth, and the EY alliance introducing AI tools to the auditing giant.
How $270M Brought Cohere Back to Earth
Cohere raises $270M Series C at $2.1B valuation, replacing earlier $6B rumors. Inovia Capital led with Nvidia, Oracle, Salesforce Ventures and other participants. Founders Aidan Gomez, Ivan Zhang, Nick Frosst. New COO Martin Kon. Cloud-agnostic platform, enterprise customers, search/retrieval and action-taking model future directions.
Facebook's Quiet Atlas ML Acquisition Quietly Expands AI Research Infrastructure
Facebook's December 2019 acquisition of Deeptide Ltd., the UK startup behind Atlas ML and the Papers With Code repository, for approximately $40 million — and what it means for the ML research community.
Mistral's Voxtral Opens Audio AI with Open-Weight Alternative
French startup Mistral releases Voxtral, its first open-weight audio model, challenging dominant closed AI audio systems with affordable open alternatives available in 24B and 3B parameter sizes.
Redis Labs shifts module licensing model as $60M round fuels Source Available pivot
Expanded article on Redis Labs' licensing model change and $60M funding round, incorporating industry context and community impact.
ServiceNow Acquires Passage AI to Boost Multilingual Chatbot Capabilities
ServiceNow announced acquisition of Passage AI, a conversational AI startup that enables multilingual chatbot development, less than a week after acquiring Loom Systems
Sharma Notes Sharp Drop in AI-Washing as Pitch-Deck Practice Declines
Expanded article covering Sharma's observation on reduced AI-washing, economic context of AI gross margins versus SaaS, investor perspectives on valuations and long-term margins, and broader optimism about founder quality and ethical AI practices.
Algorithmic Progress in AI Drives Higher Compute Investment, Not Reduced Spending
How efficiency gains in AI architecture are accelerating — not eliminating — compute demand, driven by performance and substitution effects that unlock new economic opportunities.
AlphaSense Secures $150M Series E at $2.5B Valuation
TechCrunch reports on AlphaSense's $150M Series E round valuing the AI-powered market intelligence firm at $2.5B, including investor details, customer base, and industry context.
Grammarly Snags Coda, Taps Shishir Mehrotra as New CEO
Grammarly announced its acquisition of Coda, naming Shishir Mehrotra as CEO and outlining a vision to blend Coda Docs with its AI assistant into an AI productivity platform.