Cohere, a competitor to Microsoft-backed OpenAI, said on Thursday that it had secured $270 million in a fundraising round led by Nvidia, Oracle, and Salesforce Ventures, among others.
Nvidia (NVDA) shares soared more than 26% on Thursday, as the graphics chip firm capitalised on the generative Artificial intelligence boom. The surge comes after the firm posted better-than-expected first-quarter profits on Wednesday and forecasted a significant increase in data centre revenue in the current quarter.
Nvidia outperformed estimates on both the top and bottom lines in the first quarter, mainly in its data centre division, which generated $4.2 billion in sales vs the $3.9 billion expected by Wall Street. This was an improvement over the same quarter the previous year when the business recorded $3.8 billion in data centre revenue.
Meanwhile, Nvidia’s gaming business is still suffering from a COVID hangover, as customers continue to cut down on PC and graphics card purchases made during the epidemic.
“As the early excitement about generative AI shifts toward ways to accelerate businesses, companies are looking to Cohere to position them for success in a new era of technology,” CEO Aidan Gomez said on Thursday.
Because of years of investment in AI technology, Nvidia is the premier AI chip manufacturer. And, according to Raymond James managing director Srini Pajjuri, the firm isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.
Inovia Capital led Cohere’s series C investment, which was joined by DTCP, Mirae Asset, Schroders Capital, SentinelOne, and Thomvest Ventures.
Since the November introduction of ChatGPT, the technology that can create writing, graphics, or computer code on demand has piqued the interest of investors.
Last month, Anthropic, another AI firm backed by Alphabet Inc’s Google, secured $450 million in a fresh round.
