A New Wave of Foundation Model Developers Is Coming

For months, venture capitalists have been telling me the same thing: the foundation model game is over. Between OpenAI, Anthropic, Cohere, Google and dozens of open-source model developers, there’s just no way for a company developing a new large language model to break into the market. 

In recent weeks, though, VCs have modified that stance and become more positive about new kinds of AI models, those that go beyond the basic transformer-based LLMs that companies like OpenAI and Anthropic are building.

For instance, Physical Intelligence, a startup founded by ex-Googlers and Stanford and Berkeley professors that’s building a foundation model for robots, raised $70 million from Thrive Capital, OpenAI and others. Or Sakana AI, a Japanese company bringing the idea of evolution to LLM development, which landed $30 million from Lux Capital and Khosla Ventures. And Symbolica, which is building AI models that require less compute and training data.