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

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16/03/2023 04:52

(Updates quote for clarity in last paragraph)
    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.
    "Adept's language models are geared towards creating
'actions' as opposed to generating text. This automation of
actions enables an enterprise's knowledge workers to be a lot
more efficient and effective," said Deep Nishar, managing
director 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;))