Salesforce has today announced that it will be growing its Generative AI Fund. The fund is part of the company鈥檚 Salesforce Ventures VC off-shoot, which is Salesforce鈥檚 capital arm. The company announced the fund will increase funding for startups developing 鈥渞esponsible generative AI鈥� from $250 million in size to $500 million.
Salesforce Ventures managing partner Paul Drews said that the expansion would enable Salesforce to 鈥渨ork with even more entrepreneurs 鈥� accelerating the development of transformative AI solutions for the enterprise.鈥�
鈥淲e鈥檙e already seeing AI change the way the world works, and we鈥檙e excited to build on the momentum of our Generative AI fund,鈥� Drews continued. 鈥淲e鈥檙e excited to support the next generation of innovative founders.鈥�
Launched in March, the Generative AI Fund has already invested in many firms revolutionising generative AI tech, including Cohere, Anthropic, You.com, Hearth.AI and newer additions Humane and Tribble.
While it鈥檚 not the only fund investing primarily in generative AI, it does prioritise 鈥渆thical鈥� AI tech. This is not just limited to digital products. 听Humane, for instance 鈥� one of the fund鈥檚 latest investments 鈥� is creating a wearable, screenless AI assistant, while You.com hosts an AI-powered search engine with generative art and text tools.
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According to Yahoo, the Generative AI Fund is among the VC arm鈥檚 largest tranches to date; previous funds ranged from $50 million to $125 million.
鈥淎I for Impact aims to close the AI access gap by providing flexible funding, pro-bono expertise and technology to purpose-driven organizations, empowering them to accelerate generative AI-based solutions to the world鈥檚 most pressing challenges,鈥� Salesforce said in a press release. 鈥淎I for Impact [is a] philanthropic initiative to help purpose-driven organizations gain equitable access to trusted generative AI technologies.鈥�
Generative AI 鈥� assuming it lives up to the hype 鈥� could be a massive market opportunity. Grand View Research predicts that the sector could be worth roughly $109 billion by 2030.
According to a recent KPMG survey, almost two-thirds (65%) of execs believe that generative AI will have a 鈥渉igh鈥� or 鈥渆xtremely high鈥濃�� impact on their organization in the next three to five years 鈥� far above every other emerging technology.
Beyond the Generative AI Fund and AI for Impact, Salesforce is investing in generative AI technologies internally, piloting tools like EinsteinGPT (which lets Salesforce customers ask questions about Salesforce鈥檚 content and services) and SlackGPT (which answers natural language questions about Slack content).
