**Inflection AI Raises $1.3 Billion in Funding Round**
San Francisco-based A.I. startup, Inflection AI, has recently secured $1.3 billion in funding from notable investors such as Microsoft, Nvidia, and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, as well as Bill Gates. This funding will be used to further develop Inflection AI’s first product, a personal assistant named Pi (Personal A.I.), which was launched in May.
**Total Funding of $1.5 Billion**
With the latest funding round, Inflection AI has raised a total of $1.5 billion. In early 2022, the company raised $225 million from some of the same investors, including former Meta Chief Technology Officer Mike “Schrep” Schoepfer, Google DeepMind co-founder and CEO Demis Hassabis, and pop artist Will.i.am.
**Building a Universal A.I.-Powered Digital Assistant**
Inflection AI aims to develop a universal A.I.-powered digital assistant, which many technologists, including Bill Gates, see as the future of human-computer interaction. Gates envisions a future where people no longer need to visit search sites, productivity sites, or even Amazon, as personal agents like Pi will handle all the necessary tasks.
**Investor Enthusiasm for Generative A.I. Startups**
The size of Inflection’s funding round reflects the growing investor enthusiasm for startups in the generative A.I. field, particularly those focused on large language models (LLMs). Startups like Cohere AI, Anthropic, and Runway have also recently announced funding rounds in the hundreds of millions of dollars. However, the significant funding for Inflection AI also highlights the high costs associated with creating these A.I. models, as they require expensive, specialized computer chips and large datacenters for training.
**NVIDIA’s Support for Generative AI Models**
Jensen Huang, founder, and CEO of NVIDIA, expressed his support for the groundbreaking work done by the Inflection AI team, deploying NVIDIA AI technology to develop and deploy massive generative AI models. He believes that the ability to use natural, conversational language to interact with supercomputers will simplify aspects of everyday life.
**Co-Founders and Background**
Inflection AI was co-founded by Mustafa Suleyman, who now serves as the startup’s CEO. Suleyman previously co-founded DeepMind alongside Demis Hassabis in 2012. Google acquired DeepMind in 2014, and Suleyman later joined Google as a vice president responsible for product management and policy for A.I. After a brief return to DeepMind, Suleyman left Google in 2022 to join venture capital firm Greylock Partners, where Inflection AI was incubated. Greylock partner Reid Hoffman, who co-founded PayPal and LinkedIn and backed OpenAI at an early stage, is also a co-founder of Inflection.
**Integration of A.I. Personal Assistants into Daily Life**
Several venture capitalists, including Marc Andreessen, predict the integration of A.I. personal assistants into various sectors. Andreessen believes that chatbots like Pi will become pervasive in every aspect of life, providing individuals with personal AI assistants that are knowledgeable and helpful across different domains.
**Inflection’s Pi Chatbot**
Although Inflection’s first product, the Pi chatbot, is more limited compared to other chatbots like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Bard, it serves as an empathetic listener and a good conversationalist. The chatbot is designed to be available for conversations with users at any time, providing support as a teacher, coach, confidante, creative partner, and sounding board.
**Ambitions for Building a Supercomputer**
Inflection plans to surpass competing systems by using the funds raised to build a supercomputer in collaboration with Nvidia and CoreWeave. This supercomputer, powered by Nvidia’s H100 Tensor Core graphics processing units, will assist in training massive A.I. models. With 22,000 of these powerful computer chips dedicated to A.I. applications, the supercomputer will become one of the most robust GPU clusters globally.
**State-of-the-Art Performance and Future Endeavors**
The recently completed MLPerf reference training task by Inflection’s supercomputer showcased its state-of-the-art performance, completing the benchmark evaluation in just 11 minutes. Through further development and investment in A.I. technologies, Inflection AI aims to revolutionize human-computer interaction and transform everyday life with its personal A.I. assistant, Pi.
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