Coordinate Israel, Google, Nvidia participated in the investment, OpenAI's strong rival AI21 Labs

The popularity of artificial intelligence continues, and the enthusiasm for investment will only increase.

Recently, Israeli startup AI21 Labs announced a $155 million Series C round to accelerate the growth of text-based generative AI for the enterprise. Investors in this round of financing include Walden Catalyst, Pitango, etc., and Google and Nvidia also participated.

The new funding round brings AI21 Labs’ total funding to $283 million and a total valuation of over $1.4 billion. According to the company, this financing will be an important milestone in its research and development of generative AI.

AI21 Labs has its own exclusive large-scale model Jurassic-2, which is considered to be one of the largest and most complex large-scale models in the world. Because of its authentic and reliable generated content, AI21 Labs is also regarded as a strong opponent of OpenAI.

01.One of the first companies to bring AI to the public

AI21 Labs was founded in 2017 in Tel Aviv, Israel’s second largest city, by artificial intelligence pioneers and technology veterans Professor Yoav Shoham, Professor Amnon Shashua and Ori Goshen. The company, which is working on a series of text-generating AI tools, was one of the first to bring generative AI to the masses.

The founders of its team have rich entrepreneurial experience. Yoav Shoham is an emeritus professor at Stanford University. AI21labs is the third company he founded. The two companies he founded before were both sold to Google. Ori Goshen is the founder of telecom analytics and network optimization startup CrowdX, and chairman Amnon Shashua is the founder of self-driving company Mobileye.

In October 2020, AI21 Labs launched its first product, Wordtune, an AI-based writing assistant that can understand context and suggest paraphrasing and rewriting. It is the source of most of the company's revenue.

In August 2021, the company launched AI21 Studio, a developer platform for building custom text-based business applications from AI's language models. In the same month, the natural language processing system Jurassic-1 was launched, covering a vocabulary of more than 250,000.

On August 31, 2023, the company announced the completion of Series C financing of US$155 million, further strengthening AI21 Labs' position as the leader in generating AI unicorns.

Currently, AI21’s proprietary Jurassic-2 base model, considered one of the largest and most complex LLMs in the world, is powered by AI21 Studio.

02. Reshape writing and reading with AI

The founder of AI21 limited AI to the reshaping of writing and reading. Whether it is the first product Wordtune or the main product AI21 Studio, it reflects the inheritance of the company's main line.

Flagship Product: AI21 Studio

The company's flagship product is AI21 Studio, a To B paid platform for developers that provides API access to customizable Jurasic-2 and task-specific language models, enabling thousands of real-time applications. Text generation and understanding capabilities. Multiple languages are currently supported, including English, Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Italian, and Dutch.

AI21 Studio has basic models and specific task modes. The basic model is a general language model that is sufficient to undertake any language tasks including text generation, summary, and translation. After training, the Jurasci-2 model can follow natural language instructions and does not require any examples to adapt to new tasks.

According to Stanford University's HELM language model evaluation, the Jurasci-2 model is one of the highest-ranked models in the industry in terms of accuracy and reliability. Jurassic-2 is available in three sizes, Ultra, Mid and Light, with a separate command-tuned version for each size.

Task-specific patterns refer to models trained and optimized for specific tasks that are leveraged across use cases and industries. AI21 Studio provides a plug-and-play artificial intelligence API engine Contextual Answers, which can implement large-scale language model technology on enterprise data without NLP expertise, and build an excellent artificial intelligence reading and writing experience.

In the specific task mode, there are examples based on specific industries to choose from, such as text editors that can enhance writing skills, retail software that writes product descriptions according to specified requirements, and internally stored knowledge for users to answer questions and provide instant answers. , and a content management system for generating long documents or article summaries at scale.

If you are interested, you can create an account on AI21 Studio. The official website provides a flexible pay-as-you-go plan and a large number of free trial points.

Writer Artifact: Wordtune

If AI21 Studio gives access to Jurassic-2, then Wordtune is a deeply rooted writing polishing tool. Wordtune is unique in its design concept. Instead of directly helping users create copy, it uses AI to reword it.

Wordtune has successfully acted as the user’s AI writing assistant by rewriting and polishing it. Users don't need to worry about grammar or spelling errors. Wordtune can give personalized rewriting suggestions based on the user's writing style from words to sentences to paragraphs. For different document application scenarios, Wordtune has prepared a variety of guide format templates for users to choose from, from emails to promotional posts and more.

Wordtune not only allows users to make their own choices, but also helps create a personal knowledge base and find facts. AI will automatically search at least 5 sources and select trusted sources for use.

Even on mainland websites, we can see many users’ high-scoring reviews and recommendations for Wordtune. As Wordtune's slogan is to inspire professional potential, everyone has a lot of work to do, some people accept setbacks, and smart people choose Wordtune to accelerate the task at hand.

After being launched in 2020, Wordtune was quickly named one of Google’s most popular extensions in 2021. AI21 Studio did not stand still, but continued to upgrade this product. It then continued to develop Wordtune Read, which focuses on assisting long text reading. This year, it released Wordtune Spices with more than a dozen polishing methods.

But AI21 Studio has not forgotten the original intention of the product, which is to always give full play to people's creativity, and AI is just a pair of wings to help people create.

03.Application examples are found in all walks of life

AI21 Labs quickly rose to prominence due to its superior competitive advantages and extensive partnerships. Through its advanced language model and natural language processing technology, it has provided customers with efficient and accurate solutions in multiple industries such as games, services, and education.

Easyway: AI helps hotel customer experience

Easyway is a customer relationship management platform designed to help luxury hotels conduct two-way communication with guests through instant messaging applications and provide high-quality customer service. By integrating with AI21, Easyway successfully automates and personalizes customer interactions.

* Function 1: Intent detection

With the help of AI21's large language model, Easyway is able to analyze intent with high accuracy and currently has 15 sentiment analysis models based on common questions. By analyzing guests' questions and emotions, you can accurately understand your guests' needs.

Asaf, the founder of Easyway, said, "This feature will definitely have a greater impact. Once we have a solid emotion detection solution, we will be able to achieve more automation."

• Function 2: Automatic translation

In order to meet the needs of passengers from different countries, Easyway uses AI21's technology to realize high-quality two-way translation, supporting up to more than 100 languages. Both hotel staff and guests can speak their native language freely, and AI will automatically translate during the communication.

In fact, this feature was already in production before Easyway came into contact with AI21. But there's plenty of room for improvement, the company said: "One of the issues we have to address is the different syntax levels of end users."

Currently, Easyway plans to further expand their automation capabilities and achieve more intelligent customer interactions by deeply exploring the potential of AI21.

Ubisoft: AI leads a new era of game development

Ubisoft is one of the world's leading video game giants, the creator of the games "Assassin's Creed", "Just Dance" and "Watch Dogs". Has been committed to creating a rich and immersive game experience. In order to improve the efficiency and quality of game development, Ubisoft has begun to use artificial intelligence technology extensively. Through cooperation with AI21, it has successfully solved many challenges in traditional game development.

* Function 1: Automate tedious tasks

Ubisoft will encounter a lot of tedious motivation formulation during the game development process, such as NPC line writing and task design in script writing. To save time and improve efficiency, Ubisoft's internal models can use the output of AI21 as a launching pad, rather than having to painstakingly express motivation in 5-10 different ways.

"It got our writers to work right away, and it was an inspiration tool for them," said Swanson, head of Ubisoft's research center.

• Function 2: Data enhancement requirements

Ubisoft had to use internal models to create an automatically interpreting game engine, but manually fine-tuning the data often took a long time. With AI21, Ubisoft can generate thousands of inputs and use its fine-tuned dataset to hand-pick the best ones for editing. In this way, more diverse and unique game elements can be generated efficiently and quickly.

"By partnering with AI21, we unlock an unlimited source of training data, in whatever precise format we need," Swanson said.

Regarding AI21 Labs, NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang said: "The innovative work of the AI21 Labs team will help enterprises accelerate productivity and efficiency and provide accurate, trustworthy and reliable generative AI-based systems."

Facing the future, AI21 Labs will continue to improve natural language processing technology and apply it to a wider range of fields.

04. More efficient human-machine collaboration than general large models

Calling AI21 the biggest opponent of OpenAI and Cohere is not a bluff. Unlike ChatGPT, AI21 provides users with a smaller, more accurate task model, significantly reducing the number of "illusions" (false information presented by the AI engine as if it were real information).

Amnon Shashua, co-founder of the Israeli company, mentioned in an interview, "We have found our own ways to reduce the occurrence of hallucinations through creative solutions, such as referencing algorithms to external language model libraries." This kind of innovation The method enables AI21 to provide users with more accurate and reliable text generation services, thereby improving the efficiency and quality of human-machine collaboration.

Co-founder Yoav Shoham also said in an interview that AI21Labs "usually wins" when it competes with OpenAI for enterprise business, because the enterprise AI solutions it provides are more stable and reliable**.

Undoubtedly, the track where AI21 Labs is located is popular, and their current priority may be to expand the scale, strengthen the team, and actively carry out technological innovation, so as to move forward steadily in the enterprise AI market.

A report from the IBM Institute for Business Value mentions, “In the next few years, the use of generative artificial intelligence will dominate all roles and all levels of the entire organization.” And as more and more people like AI21 commit to Join companies that create specific solutions, and the next phase of AI may be even more exciting than a world of generic big models.

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