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investiture in generative AI startup — those that are create AI - powered product to bring forth text , audio , video and more — are n’t slow down . But they ’re being consolidate into a shrinking number of early - point venture .

In the first one-half of 2023 , from January to July 16 , 225 startups raised $ 12.3 billion from VCs , according to Crunchbase information share with TechCrunch . Should the trend maintain , reproductive AI fellowship are on track to match or exceed theroughly $ 21.8 billionthey call down in 2023 .

Here ’s how the H1 2024 total broke down by stage :

Early - degree inauguration were the clear winners , like Elon Musk’sxAI(whichraised$6 billion in May ) , China’sMoonshot AI($1 billion in February),Mistral AI($502.6 million in June),Glean($203.2 million in February ) and Cognition ( $ 175 million in April ) . According to Chris Metinko , an analyst and senior reporter at Crunchbase , investor come out to be depend on big startups they see as suffer a mellow fortune of winner while letting those they ’re less certain about “ wither away ” at the earlier stages .

“ Some VCs expect the legal and regulative dilemma AI troupe could face in both the U.S. and overseas to lead to a lag in the flood of AI support , ” Metinko severalise TechCrunch . “ Others point to the fact that when the mobile revolution occurred more than a decennium ago , the biggest winners when it came to the foundational base layer ended up being well - prove tech fellowship . ”

To Metinko ’s breaker point , the fate of many generative AI businesses — even the best - fund ones — looks muddy .

Generative AI models are typically train on data like trope and text sourced from public WWW Thomas Nelson Page , and companies aver   that sightly utilisation shields them from legal challenges in casing where that data turns out to be copyrighted . But it ’s not open yet whether the court will at last decide in party favour of productive AI companionship , which is belike why some have begun to ink licensing deal with right of first publication holder .

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Regardless of the outcome of any one court case , eminent - quality breeding data is becoming harder andmore expensiveto obtain as inauguration release the entanglement ’s provision and more Creator choose to block fishworm from scraping their data . ( Oneanalysisestimates that the market for AI training datum will get from $ 2.5 billion to $ 30 billion within a ten . ) The process oftrainingmodels is n’t getting any sluttish or loud , either : Per a recent Stanfordreport , OpenAI’sGPT-4cost $ 78 million to train while GoogleGemini’sprice tag end came in at $ 191 million .

Unsurprisingly given the substantial upfront investment ask to build flagship models , few generative AI inauguration are profitable — not even big guns such as OpenAI and Anthropic . According to The Information , OpenAI , which is reportedlygenerating around $ 3.4 billionin taxation , could end up lose $ 5 billion this year .

investor in procreative AI are play the long game , it ’d seem — specially big tech investors like Google , Amazon and Nvidia , which see procreative AI investments as strategic bets . But could the house of cards burst soon ? If generative AI startups are n’t capable to overcome the existential challenges face them , that seems like a real opening .