A boom phase in the development of artificial intelligence has existed for decades, with chess computer Deep Blue defeating then-world chess champion Garry Kasparov in 1996 and 1997. But nothing piques the interest of investors and big tech companies like today's companies. This wave of AI investment began with the release of OpenAI's ChatGPT, a direct-to-consumer application based on the GPT language model.
Critics consider this type of artificial intelligence to be little more than a “probabilistic parrot” that constructs words and sentences according to statistical probabilities. Meanwhile, AI evangelists are defending his ChatGPT as the first major step toward true “artificial general intelligence” capable of human-like cognitive abilities. Companies and investors are not afraid to spend large sums of money to accelerate this development.
OpenAI has raised approximately $14 billion in funding through its partnership with Microsoft and other investments, and its potential market capitalization is currently estimated at approximately $80 billion. ChatGPT competitor Anthropic, the company behind Claude, is in second place with about $4.2 billion, and big data analytics platform Databricks is third with about $4 billion. In terms of current valuation, the US company ranks second with $43 billion, a figure that is not matched by any of the other companies that entered the top eight.
Another surprising fact: 8 of the top 100 best-funded companies selected by CB Insights based on “deal activity, industry partnerships, team strength, investor strength, patent activity, and unique Mosaic Score.” Seven of the companies are based in the United States. . The only outlier, Mistral AI, is a French company founded just a year ago by Meta and a former Google DeepMind employee, who has already amassed $544 million in less than 12 months. We are raising capital. Looking at the full lineup, a total of 69 of the top 100 AI startups are based in the US, followed by the UK (7), Canada (5), Germany and France (3 each), China (2 companies). .
The market still doesn't seem to think the AI boom is going away anytime soon, but some of its most vocal critics predict a crash in the near to medium term. Even companies investing in AI are now skeptical. According to a report in technology publication The Information, decision-makers at companies such as Amazon and Google are considering using AI for their business customers because the ubiquitous hype hides high operational costs, making it less effective. The company reportedly asked the marketing department to be less aggressive in advertising. It was more revolutionary than I expected.
