Inflection AI, an AI startup founded by LinkedIn and DeepMind co-founders, raises $1.3 billion from Nvidia and others

Just less than a month after launching its AI chatbot to take on OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Microsoft-backed AI startup Inflection announced today it has raised $1.3 billion in funding, from investors including Microsoft and Nvidia, as the AI boom continues with no sign of slowing down.

With this latest funding, the one-year-old Inflection is now valued at $4 billion, joining a handful of generative AI unicorn startups including Typeface which raised $100M in funding today led by Salesforce, Reuters reported, citing a source familiar with the matter.

We featured Inflection last month after it released its first AI chatbot product called Pi similar to OpenAI’s ChatGPT. According to the company, Pi uses generative AI technology, similar to ChatGPT, to interact with users via dialogues, enabling them to ask questions and offer feedback, the company said Tuesday. The announcement comes just two months after Hoffman stepped down from the OpenAI Board of Directors to avoid a conflict of interest.

Hoffman co-founded Inflection AI with DeepMind co-founder Mustafa Suleyman and former DeepMind researcher Karén Simonyan in 2022. Inflection AI is one of the highest-profile startups working on generative AI technology similar to OpenAI. We wrote about Inflection AI a year ago.

While the chatbot is not currently connected to the internet, Suleyman said that the Pi chatbot is currently available on various platforms such as its website, app, and social media platforms like Instagram. The service is currently free, and there may be premium subscriptions in the future, according to Suleyman. Pi’s AI system is trained using user data, including conversational content, as stated in its terms of service.

Inflection AI is also the first company Suleyman has co-founded since he sold DeepMind to Google in 2014 for around $600 million. In a statement, Suleyman said, “Reid and I are excited to announce that we are co-founding a new company, Inflection AI.” He added, “Inflection will be an AI-first consumer products company, incubated at Greylock, with all the advantages and expertise that come from being part of one of the most storied venture capital firms in the world.”

Inflection CEO Suleyman said the company will use the fresh capital infusion to boost the computing power needed to develop a more powerful foundation model. The Palo Alto, California-based startup currently has about 35 employees. Early last year, Inflection raised $225 million in a first round of funding from Greylock, Microsoft, and Reid Hoffman.

“We’ll be building a cluster of around 22,000 H100s. This is approximately three times more compute than what was used to train all of GPT4. Speed and scale are what’s going to really enable us to build a differentiated product,” Suleyman said at Collision Conference on Thursday.