Visa launches a $100 million venture fund to invest in generative AI startups

Despite a funding drought affecting many startups, generative AI startups continue to ride the wave of the ChatGPT-led AI boom as investors pour billions into the space hoping to find the next big winner. The most recent heavyweight to step into the AI investment game is global payments giant, Visa.

On Monday, Visa announced the launch of a $100 million venture fund dedicated to supporting generative artificial intelligence (AI) startups. This investment positions Visa among a growing list of investors who’ve shown keen interest in the AI sector throughout this year.

The news comes just a week after Amazon also announced it was investing up to $4 billion in Anthropic as part of the effort to maintain its competitiveness in the rapidly growing cloud market dedicated to artificial intelligence (AI).

Visa, a prominent payments processor, has now thrown its weight behind the AI realm, a field that has gained substantial traction, particularly since the widespread popularity of chatbot ChatGPT.

Visa and Amazon are not alone. Other big names in the tech industry, including Microsoft and Alphabet’s Google, have already made substantial investments in the AI space. It’s become a buzzword, sparking excitement within technology circles.

Jack Forestell, Visa’s Chief Product and Strategy Officer, explained the significance of generative AI in transforming not only content creation and tasks but also commerce itself, Reuters reported.

“While much of generative AI so far has been focused on tasks and content creation, this technology… will also meaningfully change commerce in ways we need to understand,” Forestell said in a statement

The emergence of LLM also led to the rise of Generative AI, which is a branch of artificial intelligence (AI) that focuses on creating or generating new content, such as text, images, videos, or even music, that is similar to what humans can produce. Unlike other AI techniques that primarily analyze and classify existing data, generative AI aims to generate new and original content that is creative and novel. At its core, generative AI is a technology capable of generating entirely new content based on its analysis of past data and patterns.

The popularity of OpenAI ChatGPT has now led to a boom in the adoption of generative artificial intelligence (AI) and big tech companies and small startups alike are in a race to integrate it into their products. Today, there are hundreds of generative AI startups globally.

In June, we covered the top generative AI startups dominating the space. These startups harness the power of natural language processing, machine learning, and other forms of artificial intelligence to create fresh and innovative content across various business applications.