Investors are having second thoughts about the generative AI boom, citing concerns about the real applicability of the budding technology and the difficulty competing with huge tech companies such as Amazon, which are investing heavily.
Pitchbook says investments in generative AI startups are down, both by number and by deal size. The firm counts 142 investments in April, May, and June, and only 101 investments in July, August, and September. The cumulative deal value in the Q3 was $6.1 billion, but $4 billion of that was Amazon’s investment in Anthropic. Deal value in Q3 was $4.36 billion, Pitchbook says.
“Momentum is definitely waning as the market comes back to Earth,” Index Ventures partner Bryan Offutt told Pitchbook. Generative AI, and ChatGPT-style chatbots in particular, are still too prone to inaccuracies to be considered reliable enough for commercial application.
The whole tech space is in a venture-capital slump, a trend boosted by rising interest rates. And generative AI investments continue to outperform those in the wider tech space, Pitchbook points out.
The Israeli AI company AI21 raised $155 million in August. The medical AI assistant company Corti raised $60 million in September. In mid-September, the data analytics and AI platform Databricks raised more than $500 million from investors including Nvidia and T. Rowe Price.
But the trend is what matters. Investors are becoming more circumspect about the actual business potential of generative AI research projects.
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