By Niket Nishant
(Reuters) -Inflection AI, a startup backed by several Silicon Valley heavyweights, said on Thursday it had raised $1.3 billion in a fresh round of funding amid a boom in the artificial intelligence (AI) sector.
The investment valued the Palo Alto, California-based company at $4 billion, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters.
The AI space has been hailed as the next frontier for technology after OpenAI’s bot ChatGPT became a viral sensation late last year.
The industry has drawn several investors in the past few months as corporate executives examine ways to integrate the technology into their businesses, while regulators have been mulling how to tackle the technology.
Inflection’s funding comes less than two months after the company, founded by LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman and Google DeepMind co-founder Mustafa Suleyman, released its chatbot, Pi.
Pi uses generative AI technology, similar to ChatGPT, to interact with users through dialogues, allowing people to ask questions and share feedback.
Microsoft, an existing investor and also rival OpenAI backer, participated in Inflection’s latest fundraise.
Nvidia, which has stepped up its AI investments recently, Hoffman, Bill Gates and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt also participated in the latest round, Inflection said.
(Reporting by Niket Nishant in BengaluruEditing by Vinay Dwivedi)
