Companies in the artificial intelligence space have been getting the bulk of venture capital dollars as of late, and many of those innovators hail from the Bay Area. The top funding rounds from San Francisco in June yielded a $1.9 billion sum. Find out what AI-powered systems these companies are building with all that cash.
SF’s Top Tech Funding Rounds, June 2023
- Inflection AI
- KoBold Metals
- Cyera
- Charm Industrial
- Redpanda Data
- Typeface
#3 (tied). $100 million, June 29
Generative AI company Typeface secured a new investment to put toward its Series B round. The company helps enterprises expedite branded content creation. Salesforce Ventures led this latest investment, which will go toward furthering the adoption of Typeface’s platform. To date, the company has secured $165 million in venture funding, boasting a $1 billion valuation.
#3 (tied). $100 million, June 27
The company leverages artificial intelligence and machine learning to help companies analyze streaming data as soon as it’s collected. Redpanda announced a round of Series C funding led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, Google Ventures and Haystack. The round follows a period of rapid growth for the company, which grew its revenue by 5x and doubled the size of its workforce.
#3 (tied). $100 million, June 8
Charm Industrial develops solutions that can remove carbon from the atmosphere through bio-oil sequestration and decarbonize steel, using steam-reformed bio-oil. The company plans to expand its engineering and bio-oil R&D efforts, as well as scale operations and improve transportation capacity, with the help of Series B funding from lead investor General Catalyst.
#3 (tied). $100 million, June 27
Cyera’s AI-enabled solution helps enterprise security teams understand what data they have, as well as how to use and secure it. The company announced a Series B funding round led by Accel that follows its Series A from March 2022. Since that time, Cyera has recorded 800 percent revenue growth.
#2. $195 million, June 20
Based in Berkeley, KoBold Metals received backing from big names like a16z, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos and more for its latest $195 million round, and is now valued at more than $1 billion . The company uses AI to mine for valuable metals that are used in the production of electric vehicle batteries. The money will go toward developing copper reserves in Zambia.
#1. $1.3 billion, June 29
The Palo Alto-based company is building a personal AI companion named Pi. The program, which is available to test via messaging app or online, is meant to provide friendly advice based on a person’s interests and needs. Inflection is looking to build larger and more capable AI models down the line with its latest investment from Microsoft, Reid Hoffman and others. The company is valued at $4 billion.
