Index Ventures has raised greater than $2 billion for synthetic intelligence (AI) tasks.
The enterprise capital (VC) agency introduced the fund Wednesday (July 10), saying it might divide the $2.3 billion it had raised into two funds: $800 million earmarked for early-stage startups and the rest for latter-stage corporations.
“It’s an extremely thrilling time to take a position,” Jan Hammer, a associate at Index, instructed the Monetary Occasions.
He added this is because of a technological “platform shift” from AI that Hammer likened to the arrival of PCs, smartphones or cloud computing. “The final yr or two has been characterised by AI all over the place.”
Marin Mignot, one other Index associate, stated greater than half the agency’s latest funding cash has been AI tasks. It has backed Mistral — the most useful AI startup in Europe — in addition to Scale AI, which makes infrastructure for AI mannequin corporations, and DeepL, which supplies AI writing and translation companies for companies.
Index has studied the impression of AI on fields starting from accounting to molecular analysis to information heart optimization, Mignot stated.
“AI is a tide that adjustments numerous sectors of the economic system,” he instructed the FT.
Final week noticed reviews that AI had helped push enterprise funding within the U.S. to its highest quarterly whole in two years.
On the identical time an rising variety of tech corporations have begun warning buyers about dangers associated to AI.
As Bloomberg Information reported final week, a number of tech giants have “quietly” issued AI-related warnings through the “threat components” part of reviews filed with the Securities and Alternate Fee (SEC).
For instance, Meta has warned it may undergo backlash if its AI was used to unfold misinformation throughout an election, and Microsoft has stated it might face copyright infringement claims related to its AI coaching and output. And Google has cautioned it can face monetary injury if its AI instruments had been used to hurt human rights or different social considerations.
In the meantime, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell stated final week that his group is investigating results generative AI could have on productiveness, inflation and the labor market.
It’s too quickly to inform if the adoption of this know-how will eradicate jobs, enhance present jobs or create new ones, Powell stated.