Some AI Startups Find the Money’s No Longer So Easy
The youngest companies are curbing funding hopes or pausing them altogether as investors worry about competition from heavyweights like Meta Platforms and OpenAI.
The venture capital gravy train for artificial intelligence startups may be slowing down. Some young startups have struggled to close rounds investors would have jumped to win a year ago.
Take Liquid AI, which is developing a new kind of AI model that can learn while in use, not just during its training, a method that differs from the way OpenAI’s models work. In July, CEO Ramin Hasani spoke with investors about raising up to $100 million for the startup he and three other researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology had founded a few months earlier, according to two people with direct knowledge of the situation.
Some investors were wary of Liquid AI’s unproven technology, however. Earlier this month the company announced it had raised just $37.6 million from the family office of Bain Capital senior adviser Stephen Pagliuca and OSS Capital.