I founded Clarifai in 2013 after finishing my Ph.D. and then working at Google one summer. I had always wanted to start a business and felt beyond motivated to help others solve real-world problems using AI. In October 2013, after founding Clarifai, I was fortunate to win ImageNet as a launching pad for Clarifai. It’s hard to believe that it’s almost been a decade since launch, including the prototypical servers-in-my-apartment early days.
Times have certainly changed! Clarifai is helping to fuel a massive increase in the adoption of AI, which this recent pandemic has further catalyzed. We have officially entered the era of Software 2.0. I like to think of AI as software 2.0 because it genuinely is a fundamentally new way of programming computers. My first exposure to AI back in 2007 was a video of a flame flickering that AI had generated entirely. Though I knew how to program at the time, there was no way to generate a realistic video with traditional software. That’s what inspired me to get into this field. Where software has already eaten the world, and now AI is eating software. It is no longer speculation that AI will continue to create enormous value and unleash new use cases well into the future. The time is now for companies to empower their developers to infuse AI into their applications. In a recent PwC survey of more than 1,000 U.S. companies, more than 86% said that AI would become a mainstream technology at their organization in 2021.
Clarifai is now the Software 2.0 platform of choice for well over 100,000 global users, and yet there is so much more work to do bringing The World’s AI to developers everywhere. That’s why we’re thrilled to announce that we’ve raised $60 million in Series C funding! New Enterprise Associates (NEA) partner Andrew Schoen led the round, and we’re excited to welcome him as the newest member of our Board. Andrew has years of experience guiding enterprise technology companies and will be a great new addition to our existing team of Board advisors.
We’re also proud that existing investors Menlo Ventures, Union Square Ventures, Lux Capital, LDV Capital, Corazon Capital, and NYU Innovation Venture Fund have again shown their support in this new round of funding. And, we’re excited to welcome new investors New Enterprise Associates, CPP Investments, NextEquity Partners, SineWave Ventures, and Trousdale Capital to the Clarifai family! We are so grateful to have such a strong group of supporters for the journey ahead and can’t thank our customers and partners enough for making this incredible milestone possible.
With this new $60 million injection of capital, we intend to keep our feet on the gas and continue our strong momentum. In just a few days, we’ll announce a suite of exciting new products at our annual Perceive conference; you can register here. And, we’re aiming to double the size of our team in the next year. If you’re interested in coming along for the ride, check out our job openings!
Times have certainly changed! Clarifai is helping to fuel a massive increase in the adoption of AI, which this recent pandemic has further catalyzed. We have officially entered the era of Software 2.0.
