Salesforce doubles the size of the generative AI venture capital to $500 million
On the evening of June 12, Beijing time, it is reported that Salesforce, a US developer of customer relationship management software, has doubled the size of its generative AI venture fund to US $500 million and launched the "AI Cloud" (AI Cloud) service, hoping to attract corporate customers through this product.
In March, Salesforce launched a $250 million venture capital fund targeting generative AI startups. Salesforce says it is targeting startups that are developing ChatGPT-like technologies that can be used with its commercial software applications.
Salesforce invested in four startups, namely search engine upstart You.com, AI startup Anthropic, natural language processing (NLP) startup Cohere and relationship management system startup Hearth.AI.
Salesforce also launched its Einstein GPT service in March and said it was working with ChatGPT developer OpenAI to add its technology to its collaborative software Slack.
The so-called cloud services will include Einstein, Salesforce's first omni-directional AI platform, Slack, an office instant messaging app, and Tableau, a data analysis software. According to Salesforce, the AI Cloud starter package costs $360000 a year.
Salesforce's move shows that more and more technology companies are combining their own tools with generative AI.
Marc Benioff, chief executive of Salesforce, said: "AI is reshaping the world and changing the business model in ways we never imagined. In the future, every company will put AI first."
In addition to its own products, AI Cloud will host large language models from other companies, including Amazon Cloud Services (AWS), Anthropic and Cohere. Large language model is the core software system of generative AI such as ChatGPT.
Salesforce said the AI cloud service will restrict large language models from retaining sensitive customer information to protect the data privacy of enterprises using the service.
