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By Abdul Azeez, Jehan Saldin · Apr 5, 2024
AI/ML top picks: The GenAI arms race accelerates
In the past two editions, the framework has identified the most promising startups in emerging industries, equipping innovators with the knowledge to identify the best companies before they reach product maturity.
For the 2024 cohort, we focus on identifying the top 20 startups in specific industries. The following is an excerpt of one report from a series of sector-specific reports covering Top Picks for 2024. It focuses on the AI/machine learning (ML) ecosystem, exploring industries like GenAI Applications, Foundation Models, GenAI Infrastructure, and ML Infrastructure.
Key takeaways
- Foundation models show unsurprising domination, as these versatile large models continue to evolve and have demonstrated proven value across numerous use cases.
- In 2023, companies developing foundation models collectively raised over $21 billion in funding—the highest of any industry in SPEEDA Edge. However, nearly 85% of this funding was concentrated toward big players such as OpenAI and Anthropic.
- GenAI hardware players fare well as demand for powerful and efficient hardware skyrockets. Startups developing hardware solutions to tackle the compute challenges associated with GenAI have thrived in this year’s top picks. Hardware developers tailored specifically for GenAI workloads such as d-Matrix and Lightmatter accounted for over 40% of all funding in the GenAI infrastructure space.
- End-user GenAI applications also made their mark, as startups offering purpose-built applications for specific industry use cases fared better, indicating a shift away from general-purpose chatbots toward more specialized "co-pilot" solutions tailored to individual sectors.
SPEEDA Edge top picks for 2024
Source: SPEEDA Edge
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