AI news and funding updates from the last 24 hours(27th March 2025):
✅ Perplexity
- Growth & Revenue: The AI search engine startup has reached $100 million in annualized revenue within 20 months of launching its Pro plan, with a 6.3x year-over-year growth.
- Offerings & Funding: It offers free, Pro, and Enterprise plans (plus API access) and is reportedly in funding talks for an $18 billion valuation—double its previous round. Major backers include NVIDIA and Jeff Bezos.
- Product Update: Recently launched its in-house AI model Sonar, built on Meta’s Llama 3.3 70B, now available for Pro users.
✅ Together.ai
- Product Launch: Introduced Together Chat—a consumer-focused AI platform that integrates various open-source models (e.g., DeepSeek R1, Qwen Coder) for coding, research, and creative tasks.
- Funding: The launch follows a $305 million Series B funding round.
✅ IBM
- Collaboration: IBM is in discussions with the Indian government to explore partnerships in quantum computing, AI, and geospatial solutions, aligning with India’s National Quantum Mission to boost technological innovation.
✅ Deloitte
- Space Initiative: Launched the ‘Deloitte-1’ satellite in collaboration with SpaceX and Spire, as part of a broader space strategy that also includes the rollout of a Global AI Simulation Centre of Excellence.
✅ Anthropic
- Model Enhancements: Plans to release an upgraded Claude 3.7 Sonnet model with an expanded 500k token context window. It has also introduced Claude Code for agentic coding tasks and a web search feature for paid users.
- Partnership: Joined forces with Databricks in a five-year deal to integrate its Claude models into Databricks’ data intelligence platform.
✅ Alibaba
- Multimodal Upgrade: Rolled out voice and video chat features for Qwen Chat via its new open-source model, Qwen2.5-Omni-7B, which supports text, images, audio, and video processing in real time.
✅ DeepLearning.AI
- Educational Initiative: Launched a free short course, “Vibe Coding 101 with Replit,” designed to teach users how to build and deploy applications using AI coding tools, in line with its mission to provide accessible AI upskilling.
✅ OpenAI
- Revenue & Funding Projections: Expected to see dramatic revenue growth—from $12.7 billion this year to $29.4 billion next year—with a substantial $40 billion funding round (led by SoftBank) in the works.
- Product Innovations: Enhancing ChatGPT with native image generation features and integrating Anthropic’s Model Context Protocol (MCP) to improve model connectivity to external data. Due to high demand, the new image generation feature is currently delayed for free users.
- Copyright Debates: Its AI image generation tool, popular for producing Studio Ghibli-style images, has sparked copyright discussions.
✅ EY India
- Industry-Specific LLM: Developed a fine-tuned large language model (LLM) built on Llama 3.1-8B tailored for the BFSI sector, aiming to enhance customer interactions, efficiency, and risk management, with claims of up to 50% cost savings.
✅ Databricks
- Strategic Partnership: Collaborating with Anthropic to integrate Claude AI models into its platform, which will empower over 10,000 businesses to build and deploy advanced AI agents for data processing and automation.
✅ Datagrid Solutions
- Expansion: The IT outsourcing firm is set to hire 100 new employees—including leadership roles and senior technical positions—to strengthen its service quality and industry standing.
✅ GetReal
- Funding & Focus: Secured $17.5 million to advance its forensics platform designed to detect AI-generated deepfakes in audio, video, and images. The startup, co-founded by deepfake detection expert Hany Farid, counts strategic investors like Forgepoint Capital, Cisco, and In-Q-Tel among its backers.
✅ Nvidia
- Acquisition Talks: In discussions to acquire Lepton AI—a startup that rents servers powered by Nvidia’s AI chips—in a deal valued at several hundred million dollars.