The beginning-up was based final yr by former Hugging Face and Meta researchers Douwe Kiela and Amanpreet Singh.
Silicon Valley start-up Contextual AI has raised $80m in Sequence A funding to spend money on its platform that goals to enhance the efficiency of synthetic intelligence fashions.
Based mostly in San Francisco, Contextual AI is behind the event of a method often known as retrieval augmented era (RAG) which boosts the accuracy and reliability of generative AI fashions with details fetched from exterior sources.
The beginning-up claims that its personal strategy to the expertise, which it calls RAG 2.0, helps develop “sturdy and dependable” AI for enterprise-grade efficiency.
Utilizing RAG 2.0, Contextual AI has created a set of language fashions that it claims can outperform OpenAI’s GPT-4 and the competing open-source fashions “by a big margin”.
“Our platform helps a variety of use instances, from technical buyer assist to funding analysis and data discovery,” the start-up wrote in an announcement. “We give attention to enhancing high-value data staff in specialised duties that ship excessive return on funding.”
The beginning-up was based final yr by researchers Douwe Kiela and Amanpreet Singh. Kiela, who’s the CEO, can also be an adjunct professor in symbolic techniques at Stanford College.
Earlier than co-founding Contextual AI, Kiela was head of analysis at Hugging Face and lead the Meta AI Analysis group that pioneered RAG, amongst different AI applied sciences. Singh has additionally beforehand labored at each Hugging Face and Meta.
Qualcomm and HSBC are latest prospects of the start-up. “With their RAG 2.0 expertise, deep experience and confirmed outcomes to this point, Contextual AI provides me confidence that we will leverage generative AI to assist our group, assist our prospects design and develop merchandise effectively, and set new requirements for efficiency and high quality,” mentioned Yogi Chiniga, vice-president of buyer engineering at Qualcomm.
Contextual AI mentioned the Sequence A funding will assist it scale its operations and meet the “surging demand” for AI in enterprises internationally.
The spherical was led by current traders Greycroft and backed by Bain Capital Ventures, Lightspeed, Lip-Bu Tan, Conviction/Sarah Guo and Recall Capital. New traders within the start-up embody Bezos Expeditions, NVentures (Nvidia), HSBC Ventures and Snowflake Ventures.
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