The technical prowess of their founders is a deliberate move on the part of the incubator and at AI2 in general. “We continue to beat the drum of startup fundamentals: solve real problems, make real experiences, put firepower on the team and build a go-to-market strategy, and we’re doing that with exceptionally talented technical folks.” It’s easy to drink a little too much Kool-Aid,” said Jacob Colker, managing director of the organization. “We’re at a tremendously exciting moment in the world of AI, but the lesson is to calm down and remain pragmatic in the face of extraordinary hype. Two off the top of my head: WellSaid was getting into synthetic voice as a service quite early, and Blue Canoe uses ML to help folks work on their accents in foreign languages. XNOR’s success alone probably would have more than justified this second fund, but AI2 has a knack for finding interesting companies with technical founders going after undervalued markets. Twenty-one companies have passed through the incubator since 2017, attracting some $160 million in further investment and at least one major acquisition: XNOR, an AI acceleration and efficiency outfit that was subsequently (and I like to think as a direct consequence of TC coverage) snapped up by Apple for around $200 million. Their previous $10 million fund did so well that the backers have returned and refilled the coffers three times over. The AI startup world may be getting hotter by the day, but there’s a difference between a startup that uses AI and an AI-first startup - and the Allen Institute for AI prides itself on fostering the latter in its AI2 Incubator.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |