Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

Beijing time on October 22 news, people familiar with the matter said that Google is in negotiations to invest at least 200 million US dollars (about 1.45 billion yuan) in artificial intelligence (AI) startup Cohere. This is yet another sign that the arms race among big tech companies in AI is escalating.

Founded in 2019, Cohere develops natural language processing software that developers can use to build AI applications for businesses, including chatbot tools and other features that can understand human speech and text. Last November, Cohere announced a multi-year partnership with Google, whereby Google's cloud division provides Cohere with the computing power needed to train software models.

As part of the financing negotiations, Cohere also held discussions with chipmaker Nvidia about potential strategic investments, people familiar with the matter said. Negotiations between the companies are still ongoing and could break down. It was not immediately possible to know the valuation Cohere received in any potential new financing.

Google and nvidia declined to comment. Cohere has yet to comment.

In addition to Google, other tech giants are also looking to bet more on AI. Microsoft is in deep talks about a new round of funding for AI research group OpenAI, another startup that is racing to develop software models in hopes of achieving general artificial intelligence-that is, making machines understand everything humans can-within a few years. OpenAI has made Microsoft's cloud service Azure an exclusive partner and agreed to give Microsoft priority when bringing the technology to market. In 2019, Microsoft invested $1 billion in OpenAI.

Since taking over as Google CEO in 2015, Sundar Pichai has emphasized the importance of AI to the company. In 2014, Google parent company Alphabet acquired AI research company DeepMind. Google Brain, Google's research arm, is also one of the most watched providers of large language models and other AI topics.

Cohere CEO Aidan Gomez previously interned at Google Brain and co-authored papers that improved the much-cited Transformer AI model. Some researchers warn that new AI models could raise thorny ethical questions and fuel unfounded hype in the field.

Cohere's new round of funding will be the latest investment in AI startups. In February, Cohere raised $125 million in a new funding round led by investment firm Tiger Global Fund, bringing its total funding at the time to more than $170 million. On Monday, AI firm Stability AI said it had raised $101 million in new funding from investors such as Kotu Capital and Lightspeed Ventures. The company held a launch event in San Francisco that day, which was also attended by Sergey Brin, Google's co-founder.

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