AI Startup Roundup: Nvidia In Talks to Acquire Run:AI

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Nvidia reportedly buying Run:ai

Nvidia is reportedly in talks to acquire AI infrastructure firm Run:ai in a deal worth up to $1 billion.

Founded in 2018, Run:ai optimizes GPU compute resources for AI and deep learning workloads. Based in Tel Aviv, Israel, the company’s software solutions help researchers view and allocate compute resources across multiple sites on-premises or in the cloud.

AI Business has contacted Nvidia and Run:ai for comment.

Apple buys DarwinAI

Apple has acquired startup DarwinAI, a Canadian company creating AI technology for monitoring manufacturing processes.

Apple reportedly purchased the startup for an undisclosed fee earlier this year.

Darwin staff have since become part of Apple’s AI team, with co-founder Alexander Wong taking up a director role.

Ontario-based DarwinAI had previously secured backing from Honeywell Ventures and Inovia Capital and has experience working with the likes of Lockheed Martin and Intel.

Funding news

Zephyr AI

Based in Mclean, Virginia, Zephyr AI is developing AI solutions to democratize precision medicine. The startup is developing data federation tools along with machine learning algorithms in the areas of oncology and cardiometabolic disease.

Latest funding: $111 million, series A

Investors: Revolution Growth, Eli Lilly & Company, EPIQ Capital Group and Jeff Skoll, former president of eBay

Funding plans: The funds will support the expansion of the company’s scientific and commercial team. Zephyr said it also plans to enhance its collection of training and validation datasets.

Together AI

Based in Menlo Park California, Together AI is a cloud-based platform designed for constructing open source generative AI and infrastructure for developing AI models.

Together’s serverless APIs for inferencing and fine-tuning have over 45,000 registered developers. The platform is now widely integrated into AI application development frameworks including LangChain, Vercel, LlamaIndex, MongoDB, and EmbedChain.

Latest funding: $106 million, venture round

Lead investors: Salesforce Ventures

Notable angel investors:  Clem Delangue, CEO of HuggingFace and Soumith Chintala, the creator of PyTorch

Other investors: Coatue, Lux Capital, Kleiner Perkins, Emergence Capital, Prosperity7 Ventures, NEA, Greycroft, Definition Capital, Long Journey Ventures, Factory

Funding plans: The new funding will go towards the expansion of the startup’s roadmap, including features to support large enterprises. Together also plans to expand its compute capacity.

Empathy

New York-based Empathy develops AI-powered bereavement tools to help those facing grief, estate settlement and probate.

Latest funding: $47 million, series B

Lead investors: Index Ventures

Other investors: General Catalyst, Entrée Capital, Latitude, Brewer Lane, Allianz, MassMutual Ventures, MetLife, New York Life Ventures, Securian Financial, Sumitomo

Funding plans: The funding will be used to expand Empathy’s services and cover new industries and regions in the U.S.

Tavus

Tavus builds AI models to power digital replicas, lip-syncing, dubbing and text-to-video capabilities.

Latest funding: $18 million, series A

Lead investors: Scale Venture Partners

Other investors: Sequoia, Y Combinator, HubSpot