Key AI Startup Deals in November
The most significant funding rounds of the month.
November is ending, which means it's time to look back and discuss AI startups. Today, we'll break down the five most significant deals of the month and review companies, their products, and market placement.
Let's go.
In case you missed it, at the end of last month we broke down the top AI deals of October. To keep up to date, follow along here:
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xAI | $5B
Founding date: 2023
Total funding: $11B
Products: Grok & Grok 2
We start with the biggest deal of the month. xAI, the startup responsible for developing Grok, secured $5B in a funding round, valuing it at $50B. Elon Musk's company calls its mission “to understand the true nature of the universe.” If you want to speak without marketing slogans, xAI develops large language models (LLMs).
Its chatbot is aimed at both consumers and businesses. The first version of the Grok model was released in November 2023, and the second iteration became available in August 2024. X users can use it to generate text and images (and implement AI in their projects through the API).
What's special about it?
The general approach of xAI is similar to what OpenAI, Google, Meta, and others are doing. However, if you look at the details, there are many differences. First, there's the distribution model. The Grok chatbot is still unavailable for free (although there have been rumors recently that this is about to change) and is distributed through Twitter/X's premium subscription packages. Second, Grok is trained on content data from X, allowing it to provide insights from breaking news and discussions.
Well, and besides, Grok is much less politically correct than ChatGPT and Gemini. This chatbot easily generates harsh images and, in some cases, openly shows its developers' political views. Musk considers it more fair to users.
Since the release of the API Public Beta, the xAI model has proven to be a pretty good solution for creating AI agents. To figure out how to do it without coding skills, read this post:
Musk has plenty of ambitious plans for xAI. The company plans to deploy its AI at Tesla and use it as the basis for Optimus robots. Of course, in the coming years, xAI expects to make progress in the development of general artificial intelligence (AGI).
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Anthropic | $4B
Founding date: 2021
Total funding: $13,7B
Products: Claude family
xAI is followed by Anthropic, an equally significant project based in San Francisco and founded by siblings Daniela and Dario Amodei. A few days ago, Amazon agreed to invest another $4B in the startup to support the development of ChaGPT rival with its AI assistant Claude. Starting in 2021, Anthropic has released several LLM families and even surpassed OpenAI in some product categories. The most current startup models are distributed under the name Claude 3.5.
What's special about it?
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