IBM’s $500 Million Fund Boosts Generative AI Innovation

On November 7, IBM revealed the establishment of a $500 million Enterprise AI Venture Fund, which will be devoted to “accelerating generative AI technology and research for the enterprise,” according to the corporation.

In 2023, consumer-oriented generative AI solutions will take center stage in the press thanks to initiatives like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Bard.

Concerning its generative AI technologies, such as the Watson X platform and various cloud offerings, IBM is primarily focused on enterprise-level solutions.

Over the next ten years, generative AI technologies will be the main driver of productivity and profitability, according to IBM senior vice president Rob Thomas:

“AI is slated to unlock nearly $16 trillion in productivity by 2030. With the launch of the IBM Enterprise AI Venture Fund, we’re opening another channel to harness the enormous potential of the AI revolution into tangible, positive outcomes for IBM and the companies we invest in.”

The precise way in which IBM plans to use its new $500 million AI Venture Fund is still unknown.

As stated on the company blog, the fund will be used “to invest in a range of AI companies, from early-stage to hyper-growth startups,” with generative AI technology being its primary focus.

This money comes after IBM contributed $235 million to the $235 million series D funding round for Hugging Face, a generative AI startup well-known for its vast transformer libraries, which serve as the building blocks for the generative pre-trained transformer (GPT) AI models.

IBM has been investing in corporate AI companies and actively supporting the development of open-source platforms, models, and protocols.

The most recent investments in this regard include participation in the Series A round of funding for the machine learning security platform Hidden Layer.

According to a news statement from IBM, Hugging Face co-founder and CEO Clem Delangue stated, “With hundreds of open models on the Hugging Face hub, they are significantly boosting the open-source ecosystem.”

He went on, “I am convinced that they’ll be able to accelerate their impact on AI with the IBM Enterprise AI Venture Fund, which is why we wanted to have them join our series D round.”