Which AI Startups did OpenAI Startup Fund Invest in so far in 2024?

Hey Everyone,

Many of us who follow Generative AI, the new AI startups and Venture capital trends related to it have been wondering about OpenAI’s Startup Fund .

By last May (2023) it reported $175 million in total commitments. I’ve always been curious about it and perhaps so are you?

I asked ML & AI market researcher and analyst Alex Irina Sandhu to look more closely into it for this guest post today. Subscribe to her Newsletter, the Strategy Deck .

The Strategy Deck

In Pursuit of Competitive Advantage

By Alex Irina Sand

👨🏼🤝👨🏽 Introducing 🔥 Peer Recommendations

• On occasion I’ll be recommending Newsletters that are peer cross-promotions. These aren’t Ads but peer recommendations of Newsletters that complement AI Supremacy. Jeremy Caplan writes Wonder Tools, and it has some deep dives into AI products you might find interesting.

1. Perplexity Deep dive: 🔎 The best new AI search
2. How to make the most of ChatGPT in 2024
3. 🧠 Declutter Your Tasks, Notes & Docs 🗄️

📶 👨🏿🤝👨🏼 From Today’s Peer Partner: 📶

Discover the most useful sites and apps

• Wonder Tools is a free weekly newsletter that helps you discover the most useful sites and apps.
• More than 36,000 readers rely on it to save time and stay ahead of the curve.
• Avoid missing out on new A.I. tools, apps and things that might benefit you.
• A well-known reader Tweeted "One of the most useful weekly newsletters I get." Get it free in your inbox

Wonder Tools

• Wonder Tools helps you discover the most useful sites and apps By Jeremy Caplan

• Subscribe to Wonder Tools

Via Jeremy Caplan

Guest post by By Alex Irina Sandu , February, 2024.

In recent AI news, we’ve learned about funding rounds secured by companies backed by OpenAI and its startup fund, such as Ambiance Healthcare’s Series B in January this year and Harvey’s in December 2023. 

Besides these recent developments, what other companies has OpenAI invested in? And what about its investment fund?

Here are the startups with public announcements of investments from OpenAI and OpenAI’s Startup Fund from the past year. They range across a good variety of segments and verticals and include:

• 2 Developer tools companies - Kudo AI and Anysphere
• 3 Consumer-focused assistants - Mem, Milo and Speak
• 4 Enterprise ventures - Ambiance Healthcare, Class Companion, Descript and Harvey
• 2 Hardware startups - Ghost Autonomy and 1X

Kudo AI is the developer of chatgpt.js, an open source, client-side JavaScript library for ChatGPT which enables features such as: adding wide screen and full window modes to OpenAI’s chatbot, displaying results from ChatGPT in the search results page of various engines, such as Google, DuckDuckGo and Brave Search.

Founded in February 2023 and based in Oakland, CA KudoAI has received a US$98,000 grant from companies including OpenAI, Microsoft, Ansarada , Bubble and MongoDB . 

Descript offers an all-in-one, collaborative video and podcast editing product with features such as screen recording, transcription, clip creation and publishing of finished materials. Its AI tools include video manipulation through text, AI voice cloning, automatic background noise removal and green screen effects. 

Founded in 2017 and based in San Francisco, CA, Descript raised a total of US$100M with backing, among others, from OpenAI, Andreessen Horowitz, Redpoint Ventures and Spark Capital. 

Ambience Healthcare defines its product as the AI operating system for healthcare, featuring a synergistic ecosystem of AI applications meant to reduce clinician burnout, improve system efficiency and enable quality care. 

Its tools include:

• AutoScribe - documentation tuned for clinical specialties
• AutoCDI - conversation analysis and reviewer of ICD-10, CPT codes and documentation
• AutoAVS - after visit summaries in a variety of languages
• AutoRefer - referral letters to other specialties
• AutoPrep - pre-charting and agenda design for patient visit

Ambience’s AI features have been fine-tuned for a variety of specialties and subspecialties, from cardiology to pediatrics to understand their specific workflows, reimbursement frameworks and prior authorization requirements.

Based in San Francisco, CA and founded in 2020, Ambience Healthcare last raised a US$70M Series B in February 2024 co-led by Kleiner Perkins and the OpenAI Startup Fund and including the VC firms Andreessen Horowitz and Optum Ventures. 

Ghost Autonomy develops the capabilities of multi-modal LLMs to enable software with deeper understanding for consumer autonomous vehicles. Advanced reasoning performance combined with the ability to draw conclusions by combining video, image and audio data could be the solution to understanding complex or unusual driving environments. 

Based in San Francisco, CA, and founded in 2017, the company announced a US$5M investment from the OpenAI Startup Fund in November 2023, bringing the total amount raised by Ghost Autonomy to US$220. Other backers include Sutter Hill Ventures and Founders Fund .

Go here to read the full article and list of AI startups.