EQS-News

Heliad invests in artificial intelligence business AI21 Labs

EQS-News: Heliad Equity Partners GmbH & Co. KGaA / Key word(s): Investment Heliad invests in artificial intelligence business AI21 Labs 12.09.2023 / 10:42 CET/CEST The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement. Heliad invests in AI21 Labs to accelerate reliable generative AI models

Frankfurt am Main, 12^th of September 2023 - Heliad Equity Partners GmbH & Co. KGaA (ISIN: DE000A0L1NN5) invests a low single-digit million amount in the company's Series C funding round. The round was led amongst others by Walden Catalyst, Pitango, SCB10X, Samsung Next, and co-founder Amnon Shashua. Further participation came from Google and Nvidia.

AI21 Labs was established in 2017 by an experienced group of professionals, steering it to the forefront of the technological landscape. Prof. Amnon Shashua previously founded Mobileye, later acquired by Intel, and founded the unicorn OrCam. Prof. Yoav Shoham is an emeritus professor at Stanford University and sold two of his ventures to Google. The AAA team is completed by Ori Goshen, also a seasoned entrepreneur who has co-founded the telecommunications analytics company Crowdx.

The pay-as-you-go developer platform enables the creation of tailored text-based business applications, leveraging AI21 Labs' proprietary text-generating AI technologies, most notably the advanced Jurassic-2 model. Additionally, the company offers Wordtune, an AI-driven multilingual assistant designed to enhance reading and writing experiences. Clients seeking specialized generative AI solutions can integrate with the AI21 Labs platform through dedicated APIs, catering to needs such as summarization, paraphrasing, and grammar and spelling enhancements.

The additional funding will support the sustained growth trajectory, promising the over 100 million users of just wordtune itself a more reliable and controllable generative AI-based system than its competitors, thus enhancing overall productivity and efficiency. Securing NVIDIA as an investor, a key player in AI, and being the launch partner for Bedrock, Amazon’s generative AI app development platform coupled with serving a clientele of several Fortune 100 entities, reflects AI21 Labs' dynamic potential and foresighted business direction.