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Gruppo Mondadori has launched the PLAI Accelerator, a startup accelerator focused on AI. 🚀 The company has allocated €6 million for the three years from 2024 to 2026.  The accelerator will focus on the pre-seed and seed stages, selecting 10 Italian and international startups each year to support with an initial investment of EUR 100,000 each, in exchange for a minority share.✍️ In addition to funding, PLAI will offer startups concrete AI application areas, training, mentorship, and networking opportunities with Italian and international partners such as Startupbootcamp, I3P - Innovative Companies Incubator of Politecnico Torino, Amazon Web Services (AWS), PwC Italy, Multiversity Group, GroupM Italy, Codemotion, and Datapizza. Mondadori is also prepared to provide financial support of up to €500,000 to the best startups. 📈 The application period for the program is open from May 20th and will close at the end of June. The selection phase will conclude with an event in September to identify the top ten startups for batch 1, with the program launching in October. An investor day is scheduled for January 2025. Each accelerated company will also receive €10,000 in cloud technology from AWS partners🎯.

Homegrown #startups such as Figr, hypergro, Kommunicate and Kroop AI have made it to the first cohort of ‘Google for Startups Accelerator: #AI First’ initiative. Reporting for Inc42 Media, my colleague Palak Sharma and I, shine a spotlight on the 20 early-stage Indian startups that were selected as part of accelerator programme and unravel what the tech giant has in store for these companies. Click the link below to read the story in full. https://lnkd.in/dgUNG-Uu

Today, OpenAI officially announced that it has raised a $6.6 billion round at a valuation of $157 billion. This is a record amount in terms of the volume of venture investments attracted, and OpenAI itself thus entered the top three most expensive startups. Why such a non-round investment figure, you ask. One option is because Sam really wanted to beat xAI, Elon's startup, which raised $6 billion in May. Thrive Capital acted as the lead investor, and Microsoft, Nvidia, SoftBank, Khosla Ventures, Altimeter Capital, Fidelity, Tiger Global and MGX also invested in the startup. Interestingly, Apple, which actively participated in the negotiations, eventually refused to participate in the round. Let me remind you that just before the official closing of the round, three leading specialists headed by STO Mira left (or were left) OpenAI, and even earlier, other co-founders of the non-profit OpenAI, created with the money of Elon and other sponsors, left the startup. Elon himself wrote briefly in X today: OpenAI is evil. Let's hope that the intensifying competition between AI startups will benefit us all and contribute to the progress of humanity.

#Topics OpenAI Startup Fund launches second Converge startup cohort [ad_1] Palace intrigue might be dominating the news cycle around OpenAI, but the AI startup — and its co-branded accelerator programs — are chugging along uninterrupted, so the PR team tells me. OpenAI Startup Fund (which, to be clear, doesn’t count OpenAI as an investor; it’s very confusingly a separate entity) today announced the launch of Converge-2, the second cohort of its six-week Converge program for “exceptional engineers, designers, researchers, and product builders using AI to reimagine the world,” as the company describes it in a blog post published this morning. As with members of the OpenAI Startup Fund’s first Converge cohort, the 10-15 startups chosen to participate in Converge-2 will receive a $1 million equity investment from the OpenAI Startup Fund, the $100 million-plus entrepreneurial tranche announced last May backed by Microsoft and other OpenAI Startup Fund partners. Do the math, and that’s at least a $10 million investment in the Converge-2 program — not an insubstantial chunk of change. In addition to the capital, Converge-2 participants will gain access to tech talks, office hours, social events and conversations with “leading practitioners” and the OpenA...

#Topics OpenAI Startup Fund launches second Converge startup cohort [ad_1] Palace intrigue might be dominating the news cycle around OpenAI, but the AI startup — and its co-branded accelerator programs — are chugging along uninterrupted, so the PR team tells me. OpenAI Startup Fund (which, to be clear, doesn’t count OpenAI as an investor; it’s very confusingly a separate entity) today announced the launch of Converge-2, the second cohort of its six-week Converge program for “exceptional engineers, designers, researchers, and product builders using AI to reimagine the world,” as the company describes it in a blog post published this morning. As with members of the OpenAI Startup Fund’s first Converge cohort, the 10-15 startups chosen to participate in Converge-2 will receive a $1 million equity investment from the OpenAI Startup Fund, the $100 million-plus entrepreneurial tranche announced last May backed by Microsoft and other OpenAI Startup Fund partners. Do the math, and that’s at least a $10 million investment in the Converge-2 program — not an insubstantial chunk of change. In addition to the capital, Converge-2 participants will gain access to tech talks, office hours, social events and conversations with “leading practitioners” and the OpenA...

The two riskiest business strategies for startups. If your startup is bootstrapped or not supported by a big investment avoid these two models. - Relying solely on one provider. For instance, building a website that heavily depends on a single provider's API. - Competing directly with a larger, established (or dynamic) company. For example, what's currently happening with Sora. In recent months, there's been a surge in new test-to-video AI tools. Many anticipated OpenAI to release a similar tool. These strategies can be extremely risky for startups.

AI startup Hebbia raised $130M at a $700M valuation on $13 million of profitable revenue Hebbia, a startup that uses generative AI to search large documents and respond to large questions, has raised a $130 million Series B at a roughly $700 million valuation led by Andreessen Horowitz, with participation from Index Ventures, Google Ventures and Peter Thiel. And its funding demonstrates that 50x annual recurring revenue (ARR) is becoming the norm for AI startups, especially ones that have booked millions of profitable revenue early in their journey. The formal funding announcement confirmed most of the details previously reported by TechCrunch, although Hebbia continued to raise more funds, another $30 million, after our report. But Hebbia has not yet filed an updated disclosure on this funding round to the SEC, and the latest one at this time still says it was raising around $100 million of new equity. Hebbia, which was founded by George Sivulka while he was working on his PhD in electrical engineering at Stanford, had ARR of $13 million and the company was profitable when it was pitching investors on the deal, according to a person with knowledge of the matter. The $700 million valuation implies that investors valued Hebbia at about 54 times ARR. Such heady valuations were common at the height of the pandemic-infused boom and are now routinely assigned to buzzy AI startups. Hebbia’s closest analogues, Glean and Harvey, had valuations of slightly over 60x ARR, according to the Information’s reporting. Source: Powered by V3V Ventures

✨ Excited to share that I have just published an article on the topic of "Microsoft for Startups Founders Hub: Accelerating Startup Growth with AI" on Medium: https://lnkd.in/dw7-33at Apply for Microsoft for Startups Founders Hub! https://lnkd.in/duHvURB2 Microsoft, Microsoft for Startups, Medium #Microsoft #MicrosoftforStartups #Startups #Students #MSFTAmbassadors #MLSA #Business #Idea #MicrosoftLearn #Medium #Article

2024 Class of the Google for Startups Accelerator: AI First 🇮🇳 - http://goo.gle/3WrIeJz. Google for Startups Accelerator India has just welcomed 20 new AI-first startups. The mission is to develop responsible AI solutions that make a human impact! #AcceleratedWithGoogle #GenAI #StartupIndia #Gemini #AIforGood #GoogleIndia read more at

Here’s the full list of 28 #US #AIstartups that have raised $100M or more in 2024 In the first half of 2024 alone, more than $35.5 billion was invested into AI startups globally, recent Crunchbase data found. Five of the six venture rounds of more than $1 billion raised in the first half of 2024 were raised by AI companies. Many other AI startups were able to raise mega-rounds of more than $100 million. U.S. startups raised two of the billion-dollar rounds in the first half of this year and nearly two-thirds, 64%, of the mega-rounds. Here are the U.S.-based #AI companies that raised $100 million or more so far in 2024: July #Hebbia, $130 million: Andreessen Horowitz led the round for Hebbia that closed July 8. The startup, which uses generative AI to search large documents, also raised money from Peter Thiel, Index Ventures and Google Ventures and garnered a $700 million valuation. Skild AI, $300 million: Pittsburgh-based Skild AI announced a $300 million Series A round on July 9 that valued the company at $1.5 billion. The round was led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, Coatue and Jeff Bezos’ Bezos Expeditions with participation from Sequoia, Menlo Ventures and General Catalyst, among others. Skild AI builds tech to power robots. June Bright Machines, $106 million: BlackRock led a $106 million Series C round into Bright Machines that closed on June 25. Nvidia, Microsoft and Eclipse Ventures, among others, also participated. The startup makes both smart robotics and AI-driven software and has raised more than $437 million in total funding. Etched.ai, $120 million: San Francisco-based Etched.ai raised a $120 million Series A round on June 25. The round was led by Primary Venture Partners and Positive Sum with participation from Two Sigma Ventures, Peter Thiel and Kyle Vogt, among others. Etched.ai is working to make chips that can run AI models faster and cheaper than GPUs. EvolutionaryScale, $142 million: New York-based EvolutionaryScale is developing biological AI models for therapeutic design. It raised a $142 million seed round that closed on June 25. The round was led by Lux Capital, former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman and Daniel Gross, an angel investor and former head of AI at Y Combinator. The company was founded in 2023. AKASA, $120 million: Healthcare revenue cycle automation platform Akasa announced a $120 million round on June 18. The San Francisco-based startup has collected $205 million in total funding and has raised from investors, including Andreessen Horowitz, Costanoa Ventures and Bond in prior rounds. AlphaSense, $650 million: New York-based AlphaSense raised a $650 million Series F round that was announced on June 11. The round was led by Viking Global Investors and BDT & MSD Partners with participation from CapitalG, SoftBank Vision Fund and Goldman Sachs, among others.