AI Startup Writer Pens $100M Round

Another week, another nine-figure round for a San Francisco-based AI startup.

Generative AI platform Writer raised $100 million led by Iconiq Growth. The round values the startup at $500 million, per Bloomberg.

Others participating in the round include WndrCo, Balderton Capital, Insight Partners and Aspect Ventures.

Writer’s platform is designed to help businesses use large language models to generate writing and content that can be used across different departments, such as operations, product, sales, human resources, marketing and more.

The company has grown revenue by 10x in the past two years with a customer base that includes Spotify, L’Oreal and Uber.

“Our foundation models are best-in-class, and they’re auditable, inspectable, and hostable — but it’s not just about the models,” co-founder and CEO May Habib said in a release. “Any CIO who’s tried to build an internal generative AI application will tell you that the last mile of quality is the hardest. And we help them nail that, at scale, dozens and dozens of times as they build AI applications and assistants that enable their entire organization.”

Writer had previously raised a $5 million seed funding in 2020 and a $21 million Series A round in 2021, according to the company.

Big money in SF

Writer becomes just the most recent San Francisco AI startup to raise big money.

Only last month San Francisco-based Anthropic — a ChatGPT rival with its AI assistant Claude — raised a $100 million round from SK Telecom, after raising a $450 million Series C in May.

Adept AI’s $350 million Series B in March, gave the San Francisco-based startup a post-money valuation of at least $1 billion. The startup is developing AI models that do more than respond to text commands — like chatbots do — but actually turn that command into actions.

Of course, San Francisco-based OpenAI helped lead the current AI craze back in January when Microsoft confirmed it had agreed to a “multiyear, multibillion-dollar investment” into the startup.

There have been other smaller rounds, and there is undoubtedly more to come.