Generative AI Startup Writer Raises $200M At A $1.9 Billion Valuation

C round was co-led by Premji Invest, Radical Ventures, and ICONIQ Growth, with participation from Salesforce Ventures, Adobe Ventures, B Capital, Citi Ventures, IBM Ventures, and Workday Ventures.

Nov 13, 2024

Writer has raised $200 million at a $1.9 billion valuation to expand its enterprise-focused generative AI platform.

Writer CEO May Habib says the new cash, which brings the startup’s total raised to $326 million, will be used for product development and “cementing the company’s leadership in the enterprise generative AI category.”

“At Writer, we’re not just creating AI models that can execute tasks, but developing advanced AI systems that deliver mission-critical enterprise work,” said Habib in a statement. “With this new funding, we’re laser-focused on delivering the next generation of autonomous AI solutions that are secure, reliable, and adaptable in highly complex, real-world enterprise scenarios.”

Writer was founded in 2020 by Habib and Waseem AlShikh. The two previously launched Qordoba together, which helped companies localize products to new markets. Writer has grown over the years into a full-stack generative AI platform, with products that can be customized for various enterprise use cases.

More about Writer’s fundraising and growth on TechCrunch

Precision Neuroscience CEO Discusses Artificial Intelligence Brain Technology

Imagine being able to control a computer cursor with your mind. While it may sound like science fiction to many, major companies like Meta and Apple are investing in these technologies, and a handful of companies are working to make it a reality, including Precision Neuroscience.

Co-founded by CEO Michael Mager and neurosurgeon and engineer Ben Rapoport, Precision Neuroscience began in 2021 with three former employees of Elon Musk’s Neuralink. Precision Neuroscience is developing its version of an implanted brain-computer interface (BCI) technology meant to help individuals with neurological disorders, such as ALS, to better function and communicate. Mager says Precision Neuroscience's technology is high-bandwidth, sits on "the surface of the brain without doing any damage," and is reversible.

In an interview with Yahoo Finance Senior Reporter Yasmin Khorram from the Yahoo Invest conference, Mager discusses the company's road ahead and potential market, what to expect from the upcoming Trump presidency, and a possible IPO. “We view brain-computer interfaces as a generationally important life sciences innovation,” says Mager. “This is gonna have applicability today in paralysis, tomorrow in a number of different areas.”

Amazon Tries To Lure AI Researchers With $110M In Grants and Credits

There’s an AI chip battle brewing among the major cloud vendors. Google’s Trillium, a custom chip for training and running AI models, recently entered preview, and Microsoft’s Maia is expected to follow in short order.

Not to be outdone, Amazon Web Services has AI chips, too: Trainium, Inferentia, and Graviton. In an effort to draw attention to Trainium in particular, the company is launching a new grant program for AI research.

Called Build on Trainium, the new program will award $110 million total to institutions, scientists, and students researching AI. AWS will give up to $11 million each in Trainium credits to universities with which it has strategic partnerships, along with individual grants up to $500,000 to the broader AI research community.

AWS also says that it’s establishing a “research cluster” of up to 40,000 Trainium chips research teams and students can access through self-managed reservations.

Gadi Hutt, senior director at AWS’ Annapurna Labs, a chipmaking firm AWS acquired in 2015, said that Build on Trainium is intended to furnish researchers with the hardware support they need to pursue their work. Grant participants will also be connected with Trainium educational resources and enablement programs.

IBM’s Arvind Krishna: “Businesses Will Be 'Disadvantaged' If They Don't Use AI”

This year has been one where developments on the artificial intelligence front have cranked up into warp overdrive. And IBM sits right in the center of all things AI.

In an interview with Yahoo Finance Anchor Seana Smith at the Yahoo Finance Invest conference, IBM Chairman and CEO Arvind Krishna discussed its investments in AI, regulation, and how he is evolving the computing giant for the future.

In Krishna's view, the future is incredibly bright, especially under a new administration that may cut red tape. "I think the AI spending from our clients is going to go up, I think the automation spending is going to go up, the labor demographics are going to get even worse, there's some policy statements that have implied that.

Well, technology is a way to replace labor, so that means more technology will get deployed by our clients, and so those are the kinds of vectors that we are looking at to help accelerate our business." Krishna also took issue with criticism that IBM's AI spending was not yet profitable, pointing to its generative AI book of business, which now stands at more than $3 billion, saying: "I think in the past you might've been able to ding us that we were not able to monetize or convert our research into actual dollars.

I think the last three years have been quite different." As for offering up more compelling use cases for AI, Krishna said that just because they haven't all presented themselves yet, doesn't mean they won't be showing up later. "This is one of those where if five years from now you're not using it (AI) in every part of your business, you're going to be fundamentally disadvantaged."

Box Continues To Expand Beyond Just Data Sharing, With Agent-Driven Enterprise AI Studio and No-Code Apps

To many enterprises, Box is a well-known file sharing and data collaboration application. Over the course of the last year in particular Box has become a lot more, thanks to its generative AI efforts. Today those efforts are getting a huge boost with technologies that will remake how enterprise users can benefit from their own data.

Box AI was announced in May 2023 as the company’s initial foray into using AI to help enable more utility from data and documents. Since then Box has addedMicrosoft 365 Copilot integration and AI-focussed hubs for curated search. Today at the company’s BoxWorks event, Box is pushing significantly forward with its new Box AI Studio and Box Apps technologies. Instead of just using AI to query and better understand data, the two new applications will enable organizations to use enterprise AI to build agent-driven workflows as well as applications.

The announcement marks a transformative moment for the company, which has evolved from a secure file-sharing platform to an intelligent content management solution provider. “If we think about our path, we got to over a billion in revenue on that core foundation of secure sharing, collaboration and content management,” Aaron Levie, co-founder and CEO of Box, told VentureBeat. “Our path to 2 billion is much more going to be driven by these advanced set of content management and intelligent content management use cases.”

Learn more about Box’s AI efforts on VentureBeat

SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son Shares His Vision for AI-Enabled Robots

SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son tells Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang that he wants to "bring AI intentions into robotics," taking inspiration from the Astro Boy cartoon. "The robot can talk, robot can have passions as a friend," Masa said on stage at a summit in Tokyo on Wednesday. The two billionaires announced that SoftBank will build Japan's most powerful AI supercomputer using Nvidia's new chip designs.

OpenAI Co-Founder Greg Brockman Returns To ChatGPT Maker

OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman has returned to the artificial intelligence startup three months after taking a leave from his role as president, he said in a post on X on Tuesday. An OpenAI spokesperson confirmed Brockman's return.

Brockman has been working with CEO Sam Altman on creating a new role for him to focus on significant technical challenges, Bloomberg News said, which first reported on the development.

He posted on X, "longest vacation of my life complete. back to building @OpenAI."

His return to OpenAI comes after a series of departures at the Microsoft-backed company, including its former Chief Technology Officer Mira Murati, co-founder John Schulman and co-founder Ilya Sutskever. Sutskever and Murati have now founded their own AI startups.

Read the whole story of Brockman’s return on Reuters

Ethics of AI Assistants with Iason Gabriel

Imagine a future where we interact regularly with a range of advanced artificial intelligence (AI) assistants — and where millions of assistants interact with each other on our behalf. These experiences and interactions may soon become part of our everyday reality.

In this episode, host Hannah Fry and Google DeepMind Senior Staff Research Scientist Iason Gabriel discuss the ethical implications of advanced AI assistants. Drawing from Iason's recent paper, they examine value alignment, anthropomorphism, safety concerns, and the potential societal impact of these technologies.

Thats all for today, however new advancements, investments, and partnerships are happening as you read this. Subscribe today, so you don’t miss any AI related news.