A small Palo Alto, California, tech company with 35 employees aims to develop an empathetic, personality-driven, and more “personal artificial intelligence (AI) for everyone.”
Key Details
- Inflection—founded in February 2022—raised $1.3 billion this week in a new funding round, raising the value of the company to more than $4 billion.
- The new backers include Microsoft founder Bill Gates, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman, Microsoft, and Nvidia.
- The newest funding round will reportedly allow the company to expand its computing hardware, further develop its AI technology, and add new features that allow it to answer more valuable questions, Forbes reports.
Why It’s Important
The AI arms race has been kicked into full gear since the launch of ChatGPT on November 30, 2022. In the past seven months, AI development has skyrocketed, with major companies like Alphabet, Microsoft, Apple, Meta Platforms, Amazon, and Baidu scrambling to push the best and first AI solutions into the marketplace as quickly as possible. Nvidia, a key source of AI hardware, has seen its valuation skyrocket to a $1 trillion market capitalization.
The high demand has also been ideal for startups and new companies. Inflection only launched its Pi conversational chatbot in May. Still, the interest in the company has placed it directly within the sights of leading companies like Microsoft and Nvidia—positioning it to become an industry-leading developer.
Notable Quote
“I think people can see that it’s just the tip of the iceberg. There’s so much further to go after Pi validates the core thesis, which is that conversation is the new interface,” CEO Mustafa Suleyman tells Forbes. “Microsoft has been amazing. They’re turbo-charging us. They are our anchor. And as a result of our collaboration with Nvidia, we’ve been able to tune our cluster to get it to be the absolute best in the world. We can objectively say now that we have the very best hardware in the world.”
