Latest news with #AlySong
The Star
7 hours ago
- Business
- The Star
AI startup Anaconda raises $150 million in Series C funding led by Insight Partners
FILE PHOTO: An AI (Artificial Intelligence) sign is seen at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC) in Shanghai, China July 6, 2023. REUTERS/Aly Song/File Photo (Reuters) -Anaconda, a leading provider of open-source Python software for data science and AI, has raised more than $150 million in a Series C funding round led by Insight Partners, with additional participation from Abu Dhabi's Mubadala Capital. The funding round values the startup at $1.5 billion, Bloomberg News reported, citing a person familiar with the matter. The company said on Thursday the fresh capital will support product development, potential acquisitions, and international expansion, as well as provide liquidity for employees. The funding comes amid increased competition in the enterprise AI software sector, with Python continuing to dominate as the programming language of choice for AI development. U.S. startup funding has surged 75.6% in the first half of 2025, led by the AI boom, putting it on track for its second-best year ever, even as venture capital firms struggled to raise money, according to PitchBook. This year's boom has been driven largely by major AI investments and bold bets from big tech companies, a wave of activity set off by the debut of ChatGPT in late 2022. In the past three months alone, $69.9 billion was invested in U.S. startups. Anaconda did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment regarding the valuation. The company is seeking to capitalize on growing enterprise demand for open-source tools as organizations shift from isolated data science projects to broader AI applications. The startup has also expanded its leadership team, hiring executives with backgrounds in enterprise technology and product innovation. The funding follows Anaconda's launch of a new AI platform and a partnership with Databricks. (Reporting by Kritika Lamba in Bengaluru; Editing by Shailesh Kuber)
The Star
11 hours ago
- Business
- The Star
AI infrastructure company fal raises $125 million, valuing company at $1.5 billion
FILE PHOTO: An AI (Artificial Intelligence) sign is seen at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC) in Shanghai, China July 6, 2023. REUTERS/Aly Song/File Photo SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) -Artificial intelligence infrastructure company fal raised a $125 million Series C round valuing the company at $1.5 billion, the company said Thursday. Venture capital fund Meritech led the round with participation from Salesforce Ventures, Shopify Ventures and Google AI Futures fund. Existing investors Bessemer Venture Partners, Kindred Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, Notable Capital, First Round Capital, Unusual Ventures and Village Global also participated in the round. San Francisco-based fal, which specializes in running audio, video and image models on behalf of enterprises, is part of a growing class of service providers to companies looking to use AI models that are not text-based, sometimes known as multimodal models or generative media models. In particular, image generation AI models, where users type in prompts to generate novel images, have taken off with consumers this year. While ChatGPT's initial viral takeoff was from its ability to generate paragraphs of text, its most recent viral moment came in April when it unveiled the ability to create images based on the hand-drawn style of famed Japanese animation outfit Studio Ghibli. Thanks to that feature, ChatGPT's average weekly active users breached the 150 million mark for the first time, according to data from market research firm Similarweb. Most of fal's customers are using its platform for enterprise purposes, such as to create different images of a product for an ecommerce website or for online advertising. "With generative AI, you can create infinite iterations of the same ad," fal CEO Burkay Gur told Reuters. "You can create different versions for different demographics. You can A/B test it as much as you want. And there is incremental value on each asset that you create." (Reporting by Anna Tong in San Francisco; Editing by Stephen Coates)
The Standard
7 days ago
- Science
- The Standard
Tech firms to showcase AI innovations in a China under US sanctions
An AI (Artificial Intelligence) sign is seen at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC) in Shanghai, China July 6, 2023. REUTERS/Aly Song/File Photo
The Standard
11-07-2025
- Business
- The Standard
China sets its first renewable standards for steel, cement and polysilicon
An employee walks past rolled steel at a port during a government-organised media tour to Baoshan Iron & Steel Co., Ltd. (Baosteel), a subsidiary of China Baowu Steel Group, in Shanghai, China September 16, 2022. REUTERS/Aly Song/File Photo
The Star
02-07-2025
- Business
- The Star
Alibaba Cloud announces new data centres in Malaysia, the Philippines
Alibaba Group sign is seen at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC) in Shanghai, China July 6, 2023. REUTERS/Aly Song/File Photo BEIJING Alibaba Cloud, the cloud computing arm of Chinese tech giant Alibaba Group, announced the opening of its third data centre in Malaysia on Tuesday and disclosed plans to launch a second data centre in the Philippines in October, according to a statement released on Wednesday. The expansion ensures that Alibaba Cloud can meet the rising global demand for secure, resilient and scalable cloud services, the company said. - Reuters
