Together AI, a startup offering a cloud platform for building and running open-source generative AI models, has raised $102.5 million in Series A funding. The round was led by prestigious VC firm Kleiner Perkins.
The sizable financing comes on the heels of renewed investor enthusiasm for generative AI startups following the ChatGPT controversy. Together AI plans to use the capital injection to accelerate its mission of building the fastest cloud platform for developers and companies seeking to leverage generative AI capabilities.
In announcing the funding, Together AI co-founder and CEO Vipul Ved Prakash shared his belief that generative AI represents a seismic platform shift poised to have a profound, long-term impact across countless industries. He believes a thriving ecosystem supported by both proprietary and open AI models is critical for spurring innovation.
Together AI aims to empower organizations to quickly integrate leading open-source models or create custom ones via fine-tuning. The company cites its specialized infrastructure as a key advantage enabling superior performance and economics compared to alternatives.
Several major technology firms are already Together AI customers, leveraging its state-of-the-art model serving APIs to build next-generation generative applications. The platform also promises protection from vendor lock-in risks associated with reliance on a single provider like OpenAI.
The Series A round, which dwarfs Together AI’s prior raises, will fuel significant expansion of the company’s data centers and engineering staff. Its robust research division focusing on vital areas like sub-quadratic models and efficient inference for extra-large language models helps cement its position at the forefront of generative AI cloud infrastructure.
Kleiner Perkins partner Bucky Moore will join Together AI’s board, aiming to help the company maximize the vast potential of open-source models approaching the capabilities of costly proprietary counterparts. Moore cited Together AI’s infrastructure layer enabling frictionless generative AI integration across organizations as a huge draw for Kleiner Perkins’ investment syndicate.
With pillar institutions like Kleiner Perkins, Emergence Capital, and Nvidia betting big on its generative AI cloud platform built for openness and performance at scale, Together AI looks positioned as a leader enabling businesses to deploy transformational AI rapidly. Its ample war chest empowers Together AI to continue pursuing its bold vision.