Easy Money? AI Startups Rake in the Cash (Even Before ChatGPT)
Need a reality check on all the artificial intelligence news we’re being bombarded with in the wake of ChatGPT’s launch? You won’t find it here. The incredible numbers in this chart about investments in AI and machine learning operations cover numbers from 2015 to 2021, before Dall-E, MidJourney, ChatGPT, and Bard were household names for the nerd-set.
The research was put together by writerbuddy.ai(Opens in a new window)—yes, another AI tool—using public data from sources like CrunchBase, NetBase Quid, S&P Capital IQ, and NFX. It found that the amount of money handed over to AI firms between 2015 to 2021 increased from $12.75 billion to $93.5 billion—up 633.33%. There was a big spike between 2020 and 2021, so imagine what the two years after that will look like when all the data becomes available.
Writerbuddy.ai says it looked at investments across 10,000 AI companies, but of course, the bulk of the cash goes to a select few. It’ll surprise no one that OpenAI, developers of Dall-E and ChatGPT, got the bulk of the cash with $11 billion. (Microsoft sunk $1 billion into OpenAI in 2019(Opens in a new window) and made another multi-billion investment earlier this year.)
Other names on the list include Anthropic(Opens in a new window), founded by some OpenAI alums, and Scale AI, which laid off 20% of its workforce in January(Opens in a new window)—despite $602 million in funding.
The full infographic courtesy of writerbuddy.ai is below.
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