AI Startup Roundup: Nvidia Among Databricks' Backers in $500M Raise

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Databricks

Databricks is a data platform company that offers a unified interface and tools for most data tasks.

The startup also developed Dolly and Dollo 2.0, large language models designed to be cheaper to run for enterprises than OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

Databricks recently acquired generative AI startup MosaicML for $1.3 billion and is reportedly teaming up with Microsoft to allow Azure customers to easily build AI models using its tech.

Latest funding: Series I funding, $500 million

Lead investors: Funds and accounts advised by T. Rowe Price Associates

Other investors: Nvidia, Andreessen Horowitz, Capital One Ventures, Tiger Global, Baillie Gifford, ClearBridge Investments, Fidelity Management & Research Company, Franklin Templeton, GIC, Octahedron Capital

Funding plans: Databricks wants to continue the momentum of its strong Q2 - which saw the company cross $1.5 billion in revenue and over 50% revenue year-over-year growth.

SQream

Tel Aviv-based SQream is a data analytics company aiming to help companies obtain insights from data.

Its SQL database enables enterprises to perform analytics on petabyte-scale data to gain business insights. LG Electronics, Vodafone and Alibaba Cloud are listed on its website as clients.

Latest funding: $45 million, series C

Lead investor: World Trade Ventures

Other investors: Schusterman Investments, George Kaiser Foundation (Atento), Icon Continuity Fund, Blumberg Capital, Freddy & Helen Holdings

Funding plans: The funds will be used to expand the company's presence in North America, extend its strategic partnerships and push its AI and machine learning enterprise capabilities.

LastMile AI

LastMile AI is building a new class of AI developer tools for software engineers.

The team behind LastMile are former Meta AI staff who built core developer tools such as Bento, a custom-built Jupyter notebook platform; Mastercook, a collaborative experimentation platform for Ads ranking; and ML Hub, Facebook’s model and feature management platform.

The startup’s first product is AI Workbooks, a notebook interface for experimenting with generative AI models. AI Workbooks is designed to simplify inner dev loops.

Latest funding: $10 million

Lead investor: Gradient (Google’s AI venture fund)

Angel investors: Jerry Yang - co-founder and former CEO of Yahoo!, Guillermo Rauch - CTO and co-founder of education startup LearnBoost

Other investors: Exceptional Capital, FirstHand Alliance, 10x Founder

Funding plans: LastMile is looking to grow its team - with plans to hire machine learning engineers and full stack developers

Thirona

Dutch startup Thirona is looking to combine medical treatments for lung diseases with AI.

Thirona's LungQ platform powers pre-operative and intra-operative imaging of lung operations, offering clinicians improved abilities to analyze patient conditions.

Latest funding: $8 Million, series B - split across an investment round and a grant from the European Innovation Council (EIC)

Investors: HERAN Partners and Borski Fund

Funding plans: Thirona plans to accelerate the adoption of its innovations for precision medicine.

DeLorean AI

Based in Miami, FL, DeLorean AI builds medical AI solutions.

Latest funding: $7.5 million, series A

Lead investor: Sopris Venture Capital

Other investors: Pinta Capital Partners

Funding plans: DeLorean will use the funds to expand to the wider U.S. market as well as Europe and the Middle East.