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In another sign that current VC appetite is insatiable, Adept, a startup building AI that empowers humans and computers to co-create problems to solve problems, announced that it has raised $350 million in a Series B funding round. In addition to General Catalyst and Spark Capital, Greylock, Atlassian Ventures, Microsoft, Nvidia, Workday Ventures, Caterina Fake, Frontiers Capital, PSP Growth, SV Angel and A.Capital.
According to Forbes, the estimate was “at least” $1 billion.
The cash injection brings Adept’s total to $415 million, which co-founder and CEO David Luan said is being used for productivity, model training and headcount growth. “Glossary foundational models of language and imagery have demonstrated impressive capabilities over the past few years. Adep is building on this momentum with a new kind of foundational model that can execute actions using natural language on any software tool,” he said in a press release.
“Base model” is a bit of a stretch. But Adept’s vision is to create a so-called “AI teammate” that is highly trained to use a wide variety of software tools and APIs. Instead of researching ways to generate text or images, like OpenAI and the AI startup Stability, Adept is studying how people use computers — specifically how they browse the web and browse software — to train an AI model that turns text instructions into a set of digital actions.
Adap isn’t the only one exploring this idea. In the year Elsewhere, DeepMind founder Mustafa Suleiman has teamed up with LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman to launch Inflection AI, which aims to help humans work more effectively with computers.
The competition doesn’t scare investors away though – there’s no doubt about the market’s vast potential. In a recent survey of AI experts by Intel-owned Cnvrg.io, nearly 50% believe corporate investment in AI development will increase regardless of macroeconomics.
Adept is running lean for now with just 25 employees. But it is said to have faced some major turnover, having lost two of its co-founders, Ashish Vaswani and Niki Parmar, to other startups in recent months.
That hasn’t hindered product development, it seems. Adept’s MVP, called ACT-1, can perform tasks such as importing LinkedIn URLs into recruiting software, according to Forbes. ACT-1 displays as an overlay window on software such as Google Chrome or Salesforce. The prototype is desktop-ready, but coming to mobile in the near future.
ACT-1’s versatility has attracted strategic investors like Microsoft, Nvidia, Atlassian and Workday, all of which market software that could one day benefit from its AI assistant.
General Catalyst’s Deep Nishar said: “Generative… has the deep expertise to deliver a business product that pushes the boundaries of generative AI beyond text and image processing to practical knowledge worker functionality.” Excitingly, ACT-1 has the potential to lower barriers to entry into the enterprise workforce, potentially leading to greater prosperity.
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