AI21 Labs Completes $208M Series C for Generative AI

Intel and Comcast, through their venture capital arms, joined in a $53 million Series C extension for AI21 Labs, an Israeli-based startup developing generative AI technology like OpenAI’s GPT-4 and ChatGPT.

Other big-name investors include Nvidia, Samsung Next and Google.

The round brought the amount raised for the Series C to $208 million, and total funding to $336 million. The latest fundraise did not change the company’s valuation, however, which remains at $1.4 billion.

“A multi-disciplinary approach is needed to deliver AI to the end user,” said Anthony Lin, corporate VP and head of Intel Capital. “The AI21 full-stack offering combines foundation models with successful applications and operation tools that will help enterprises accelerate GenAI adoption to increase productivity and affect their bottom and top line.”

The company, founded in 2017 and run by co-CEOs Ori Goshen and Yoav Shoham, provides language models through AI21, a cloud-based platform. Through an advanced family of language models known as Jurassic-2, the platform enables businesses to create their own generative AI-driven applications and services.

Wordtune, the company’s consumer product, is an AI-based reading and writing assistant that understands context and meaning, allowing users to improve and write content or read and summarize text in seconds.

The company will use the latest cash infusion to enhance its task-specific language models and hire more employees.