Kore.ai, a notable player in the AI and GenAI industry for enterprises, has recently secured $150 million in its latest funding round.
This investment was spearheaded by FTV Capital, Nvidia, Vistara Growth, Sweetwater PE, NextEquity, Nicola, and Beedie. With this latest financial boost, Kore.ai’s total funding has reached approximately $223 million. The company plans to allocate these funds towards advancing product development and expanding its team, as revealed by co-founder and CEO Raj Koneru in a recent interview.
In 2014, Koneru embarked on a new venture, Kore.ai, following his foray into the world of startups with the inception of Kony, a mobile app development firm. His entrepreneurial journey didn’t start there, it included founding iTouchPoint, an outsourcing firm, and Intelligroup, a tech consultancy.
Koneru’s inspiration for Kore.ai was fueled by the potential he saw in artificial intelligence, especially in large language models (LLMs) akin to OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which he believed could revolutionize the way users interact with technology.
Koneru said via email: “With the introduction of GenAI and LLMs, the tech landscape turned out to be very chaotic and uncertain due to rapid advancements. There were more questions than answers … but I saw conversational AI and LLMs as an opportunity to innovate.”
At its inception in 2014, Kore.ai wasn’t directly involved in the development of GenAI products, as GenAI was still emerging as a discipline. However, Raj Koneru points out that the company was already setting the stage for future GenAI innovations. Kore.ai was making significant investments in models capable of generating and analyzing text, laying the groundwork for advancements in this area.
What sets Kore.ai apart, according to Koneru, is its unique approach to AI application deployment. The company provides flexibility, allowing businesses to deploy their AI applications in various environments – be it cloud-based, local, or virtual machines. Additionally, Kore.ai offers a high level of customization, enabling companies to fine-tune their applications to meet specific needs.
Kore.ai also boasts that compared to larger and more powerful AI models such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT or Anthropic’s Claude, Kore.ai’s offerings are more cost-effective and also bring more privacy with smaller and offline models.
Via: TechCrunch