Microsoft and Nvidia among investors in Inflection AI's $1.3bn funding round

The US start-up is developing a personal assistant and companion named Pi

A boy points to an AI robot poster during the 2022 World Robot Conference in Beijing. Getty

Technology company Microsoft, its founder Bill Gates and chip company Nvidia are among investors who led a $1.3 billion funding round for US artificial intelligence start-up Inflection AI as the company works on developing its first product, a personal assistant and companion named Pi that was launched last month.

Other investors in the round included LinkedIn founder and venture capitalist Reid Hoffman and former chief executive of Google Eric Schmidt, Inflection AI said on Thursday.

The new round brings the total funds raised by the start-up to more than $1.52 billion.

Founded last year, Palo Alto-based Inflection AI said it was building the largest AI cluster in the world, comprising 22,000 Nvidia H100 tensor core graphics processing units (GPUs).

Its product Pi, short for personal AI, is designed to be a “kind and supportive companion offering text and voice conversations, friendly advice and concise information in a natural, flowing style”, the company said.

“Personal AI is going to be the most transformational tool of our lifetimes. This is truly an inflection point,” said Mustafa Suleyman, chief executive and co-founder of Inflection AI.

Last year, Inflection AI raised $225 million in its first round of funding.

“A powerful benefit of the AI revolution is the ability to use natural, conversational language to interact with supercomputers to simplify aspects of our everyday lives,” said Jensen Huang, founder and chief executive of Nvidia.

“The … team at Inflection AI is helping to lead this groundbreaking work, deploying Nvidia AI technology to develop, train and deploy massive generative AI models that enable amassing personal digital assistants.”

Generative AI, the disruptive offshoot of the technology, is affecting various industries. It could add as much as $4.4 trillion annually to the global economy and will transform productivity across sectors with continued investment in the technology, according to a study.

The higher end of generative AI's annual economic contribution of $2.6 trillion to $4.4 trillion eclipses the entire gross domestic product of the UK, which stood at $3.1 trillion in 2021, consultancy McKinsey said in its report The Economic Potential of Generative AI: The Next Productivity Frontier.

“We are proud to support Inflection AI as they pursue their vision for more trusted and personal AI experiences,” said Kevin Scott, chief technology officer and executive vice president for AI at Microsoft.

“It is an exciting time, and ambitious AI companies … are pioneering the industry with transformative products that are accessible, easy to use and show the many possibilities of AI.”