CoreWeave to Invest in AI Platform Chai

Specialized graphics processing unit cloud provider CoreWeave will invest in social artificial intelligence platform Chai.

This will bring the total capital invested in Chai to over $10 million and will place the company at a $450 million valuation, Chai said in a Thursday (Jan. 4) press release.

The new capital will be devoted to Chai’s large-scale AI language model competition that allows rivals to submit language models and compete for user engagement in Chai’s entertainment app, with the winners earning cash prizes and the Chai Prize title, according to the release.

The Chai Developer Platform has resulted in the inception of several natural language modeling techniques and the deployment of several others, the release said. Thousands of large language models have been created and submitted to the platform.

CoreWeave’s cloud powers messages sent on the social AI platform, per the release.

“As the world transitions to an AI economy, everyone will socialize with AI,” Chai CEO William Beauchamp said in the release. “Maybe your next best friend will live in the cloud. We’re glad to be partnering with CoreWeave on our mission.”

PYMNTS Intelligence found that generative AI has taken off, with new companies popping up nearly every day and promising labor- and cost-saving applications in nearly every field.

The neural networks and generative pre-trained transformers behind applications like OpenAI’s ChatGPT chatbot and DALL-E AI image generator are attracting millions of users and developers, according to the PYMNTS Intelligence study“Preparing for a Generative AI World.”

Meanwhile, two-thirds of the $27 billion invested in AI startups in 2023 come from Big Tech companies like Amazon, Google and Microsoft.

While the rise of generative AI has attracted venture capital firms, these companies have been forced to reduce their spending amid higher interest rates and a decline in portfolio valuations.

In another development in the space, Menlo Ventures said in November that it raised $1.35 billion to invest in AI ventures. The firm said it would retain a focus on fledgling AI companies and not later-stage investment.

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