Inflection AI Inc., the artificial-intelligence startup from the co-founders of LinkedIn Corp. and Google DeepMind, has raised a massive $1.3 billion in new funding.
The Palo Alto startup plans to use its new money to continue building out its AI-powered virtual assistant, dubbed as Pi, it said in a news release Thursday. As part of that effort, the company, together with partners CoreWeave Inc. and Nvidia Corp., is building what it described as the largest AI computing cluster in the world, with some 22,000 of Nvidia's latest AI chips.
"Personal AI is going to be the most transformational tool of our lifetimes," CEO Mustafa Suleyman said in the news release. He continued: "We're excited to collaborate with Nvidia ... and many others to bring this vision to life."
Microsoft Corp, Inflection co-founder — and LinkedIn co-founder — Reid Hoffman, former Microsoft CEO Bill Gates, ex-Google LLC CEO Eric Schmidt and Nvidia co-led the round, which valued the startup at $4 billion, according to Forbes.
Inflection spokesman TJ Snyder declined to confirm the company's new valuation.
Launched last month, the company's Pi assistant is designed to be used by consumers who interact with it via questions and shared feedback. Inflection is designing the system to be friendly and fun.
Hoffman, a former board member of ChatGPT maker OpenAI LLC, co-founded the startup in 2022 with Suleyman — a co-founder of DeepMind Technologies Ltd. before it was acquired by Google — and Karén Simonyan.
Inflection's new round came in the form of both cash and cloud services credits, according to Reuters. The deal brings to $1.53 billion the total amount it's raised, making it one of the best-funded AI startups.
The company is one of three Silicon Valley-based AI startups to announce big new funding rounds in the last two days. Santa Clara-based Celestial AI Inc. on Wednesday and Palo Alto's Typeface Inc. on Thursday each announced $100 million deals.
