AI21 Labs, a generative AI startup, attracts $155M at a $1.4B valuation

AI21 Labs, based in Tel Aviv, has raised $155 million in a Series C funding round, which was organized by Walden Catalyst, Pitango, SCB10X, b2venture, and Samsung Next. 

Participants included Google, Nvidia, and Amnon Shashua, the creator of Intel-owned Mobileye and a co-founder of AI21 Labs, a startup creating a variety of text-generating AI tools.

The tranche values AI21 Labs at $1.4 billion, somewhat more than the amount The Information published earlier today ($1.2 billion), bringing the company's total funding to $283 million.

One of AI21 Labs' co-CEOs, Yoav Shoham, informed reporters through email that the company initially launched Wordtune, an AI writing tool, in October 2020, bringing it out of stealth. The firm has since more than doubled its personnel and has ambitions to hire even more people. Since that time, it has only managed to grow.

In 2017, Shashua, Shoham, and AI21 Labs' additional co-CEO, Ori Goshen, founded the business. Shoham, an emeritus Stanford professor, sold the social network friend manager Katango and the time management tool Timeful to Google. Goshen has co-founded and held executive leadership positions at a variety of technology firms with Israeli headquarters, most notably the telco analytics firm Crowdx.

The major offering from AI21 Labs is AI21 Studio, a pay-as-you-go platform for developers that allows them to build custom text-based business apps using the state-of-the-art Jurassic-2 model from AI21's generative AI models. The startup also provides access to Wordtune, a multilingual AI reader and writer that is similar to Grammarly.

In the booming generative AI market, AI21 Labs faces competition from a growing list of startups and established players.