AI and machine learning startups brought in nearly 58% of the venture capital funding in the first quarter of the year, according to the PitchBook-NVCA Venture Monitor. The percentage was even higher in North America, with these transactions totaling 70.2% of deal value.
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Goodfire, an AI interpretability research company based in San Francisco, has raised Series A funding worth $50 million. The funding will support the expansion and development of Goodfire's flagship platform, Ember, which seeks to move AI beyond black-box systems.
Revel has raised $30 million across a seed round and a Series A. The company plans to use the funding to expand development and market reach for its hardware control platform, which includes a command interface, a specialized programming language and a high-performance runtime environment.
Capsule is introducing real-time collaborative editing to its AI video editing tool, allowing multiple users to work on different parts of a video simultaneously, enhancing teamwork and efficiency. This feature aims to assist users in creating engaging video content without professional expertise by recommending footage, clip sequences, and the addition of titles and graphics.
1Fort, a New York City-based insurtech firm, has secured $7.5 million in a funding round. The company plans to use the funds to expand operations and development of its AI platform, which aids brokers by automating business insurance processes.
Some large companies and startups are considering whether to maintain their headquarters in Delaware or move to other jurisdictions such as Texas or Nevada. PitchBook's Kia Kokalitcheva notes that "Delaware still reigns supreme" but that there have been signs of shifting sentiment.
Montreal-based startup Deck has raised $12 million in a Series A funding round, bringing its total funding to $16.5 million. "Companies use Deck to eliminate the friction of getting their user data from places where APIs don't exist -- or are incomplete, expensive, or unreliable," said CEO Yves-Gabriel Leboeuf.
OpenAI is reportedly negotiating to acquire Windsurf, formerly known as Codeium, for about $3 billion in what would be its largest acquisition so far. The move would bolster OpenAI's position in the competitive AI-driven coding assistant market, challenging companies such as Anthropic and GitHub. Windsurf, valued at $1.25 billion last year, has raised more than $200 million since its inception in 2021.
