AI startup Adept raises $350 mln in fresh funding (updated)

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14/03/2023 20:45

(This March 14 story was updated on March 15 to add deal
details and investor comment)
    By Ananya Mariam Rajesh and Krystal Hu
    March 14 (Reuters) - Artificial intelligence (AI) startup
Adept said on Tuesday it had raised $350 million in a Series B
funding round led by General Catalyst and Spark Capital, as it
builds enterprise  applications amid the frenzy triggered by
rival OpenAI's ChatGPT.
    The funding came less than a year after it raised $65
million in April 2022, signaling strong investor interest in AI
startups in an overall slow venture market.
    Adept didn't disclose its valuation, but sources familiar
with the matter said the company was a "unicorn", a term that
describes startups that are valued at more than $1 billion. 
    Adept said it planned to use the new funds to launch its
initial products, train models and recruit more AI talent. 
    Big tech companies from Alphabet Inc  GOOGL.O  to Baidu Inc
 9888.HK  are speeding up the integration of generative AI into
their offerings after Microsoft  MSFT.O -backed ChatGPT took the
internet by storm for its ability to generate human-like
responses.      
    Founded by former Google researchers, Adept focuses on
training a neural network to perform general tasks for
enterprise clients. It has been working with companies to use
their data to help create a natural language interface to access
existing software such as Adobe Photoshop  ADBE.O  and Airtable.
    The startup recently experienced some management reshuffles
when co-founders Niki Parmar and Ashish Vaswani left the
company, but that did not hinder the fundraising given strong
investor interest. 
    "The language models they have is really action-oriented, as
opposed to prompt oriented. There's just so much to be done to
make your knowledge workers a lot more efficient and effective,"
said Deep Nishar, managing partner at General Catalyst who led
the firm's investment in Adept.

 (Reporting by Ananya Mariam Rajesh in Bengaluru and Krystal Hu
in San Francisco; Editing by Devika Syamnath and Jamie Freed)
 ((AnanyaMariam.Rajesh@thomsonreuters.com ; Twitter: https://twitter.com/AnanyaMariam;))