Bloomberg And Samsung Among The Corporates Betting Big On AI Startups

VC-backed artificial intelligence startups, which have seen a sevenfold increase in funding since 2010, have also seen corporations take a greater interest. While acquisitions of VC-backed AI startups by major corporations -- including Vocal IQ by Apple, Wit.ai by Facebook, and DeepMind by Google -- have been in the spotlight recently, corporate involvement in investing in these startups has also grown. Deals to AI startups involving corporates saw a 15x increase between 2010 and 2015. Just in the last quarter, companies including H2O.ai (Transamerica Ventures and Capital One Ventures), Gridspace (Wells Fargo Startup Accelerator) and Mobvoi (Google) saw backing from prominent corporates. Our artificial intelligence category covers startups primarily focused on developing AI, across areas including image processing, natural language processing, machine learning, deep learning, and predictive APIs, among other core applications.