Salesforce And Its Venture Arm Latest To Join AI Craze

It may not be Microsoft’s $10 billion investment into OpenAI, but Salesforce let it be known it will not be left behind in the current AI blitz.

The CRM’s giant venture arm — Salesforce Ventures1 — has launched a new $250 million generative AI fund that will look at promising generative AI startups. The firm announced at TrailblazerDX it will initially invest in four AI companies — Anthropic, Cohere, Hearth.AI and You.com.

In late January, news broke that San Francisco-based AI startup and rival to ChatGPT Anthropic is raising a $300 million round from Google — bringing the company’s total valuation to $5 billion, The New York Times reported.

“Salesforce Ventures has been investing in high-potential enterprise technology businesses for more than a decade, and these initial investments from the fund in generative AI companies fit squarely into that strategy,” said John Somorjai, executive vice president of corporate development and Salesforce Ventures at Salesforce, in a release about the new fund.

Of course, venture capital has been pouring into the AI space as both consumers and companies have become enamored with artificial intelligence tools ChatGPT and DALL-E. Just last week, San Francisco-based AI startup Typeface raised a $65 million round. Typeface’s platform is tailored specifically for “enterprise content creation,” as it can create product shots, blogs, social media ads and other posts that meet brand specifications and tailor marketing to niche audiences.

Salesforce steps up AI game

Salesforce also announced Tuesday it will be adding some AI tools to its platforms. The company — which has been under shareholder pressure as of late — unveiled new generative AI tools for customer service responses and sales emails called Einstein GPT.

In addition, Salesforce announced a new ChatGPT app for Slack.

The new tools are integrated with OpenAI’s generative models.

Further reading:

We’ve Seen This Before: Investors Take To The Next Shiny Toy — AI

Illustration: Dom Guzman

Learn More