Microsoft-backed Inflection AI raises $1.3 billion to build 'personal AI'
An 'inflection point' refers to a turning point. True to its name, Inflection AI, a Palo Alto-based AI start-up, aims to be the turning point in AI discourse. The company has now raised $1.3 billion in a funding round led by Bill Gates, LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, Microsoft, and NVIDIA. Let's see what Inflection AI is all about.
Inflection AI plans to create a personal AI
Inflection AI's aim is to help humans "talk" to computers. The company does not want people to simplify their ideas to communicate with machines. The start-up has a solution for that: personal AI. An AI chatbot that caters to the unique interests of each user. The company was founded by Google-owned DeepMind's co-founder Mustafa Suleyman and LinkedIn's Hoffman.
Inflection AI's 'Pi' chatbot is based on person's unique interests
Last month, Inflection AI released its chatbot named Pi, which is short for 'personal intelligence.' The chatbot can engage in conversations based on a person's interests and needs. The company describes it as a "coach, confidante, creative partner, sounding board, and assistant." It can have conversations on a range of topics, including general knowledge and personal relationships.
Pi is currently available for testing
Pi is currently available for testing via messaging apps like WhatsApp and Messenger or online. It can also be downloaded from the App Store. Pi is powered by an in-house large language model.
Inflection-1 is touted as the best LLM in its class
The LLM behind Pi is called Inflection-1. Based on results from the company, it can compete with models in its tiers, including GPT-3.5 and PaLM-540B. In fact, Pi performed better than them in middle school-level and high school-level exam tasks. It was also better at trivia questions and humanities, STEM, and social sciences, among others. However, it fell behind in coding.
Company will use funding to build a larger model
"Personal AI is going to be the most transformational tool of our lifetimes. This is truly an inflection point," said Inflection AI's CEO Suleyman. The company will use the funding mostly to build the computing power required to develop a larger model. It aims to build a cluster of around 22,000 NVIDIA H100 GPUs. It is the second-most funded AI start-up, only behind OpenAI.
