Enterprise Weekly #478: The Largest Llama, Advancements in AI Infra, and More
Work-Bench is an enterprise software VC firm leading Seed rounds. If you are or know anyone thinking about founding an enterprise software startup — we’d love to meet! Please reach out to chat. 📩
Happy Friday!
This week, Meta released Llama 3.1 🦙 making it debatably the most important moment in AI since the launch of ChatGPT.
The tables have turned and the quality gap between open- and closed-source AI models has shifted. In large part due to Meta’s large investment in 600,000 GPUs, open-source models have caught up, a development most didn’t anticipate just a year ago and a significant victory for anyone productionizing AI. Here’s why:
Improved Fine-Tuning: Llama’s 405B model will be effective in fine-tuning, but more interestingly, distilling smaller models, a method which has been gaining popularity. This approach reduces costs and enhances AI application quality by improving latency and performance on commodity hardware.
Access to Infrastructure: Users can leverage the best-in-class infrastructure and services without being locked into a single vendor. Meta highlighted how developers can tap into top-tier infrastructure providers, including NVIDIA, Amazon, Databricks, and Scale AI.
Better Managed Complex Architectures: With a 128k context window, this model facilitates better chaining across complex tasks like agentic workflows.
While this is a huge win for developers, enterprise adoption of AI still trails expectations and greater infrastructure buildout will ultimately depend on use case monetization and buyer ROI. Despite this, tech giants are moving fast to win the AI arms race, even if it means over-investing ahead of buyer adoption:
Google’s Sundar Pichai: “...when we go through a curve like this…the risk of under-investing is dramatically greater than the risk of over-investing.”
Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg: “I actually think all the companies that are investing [on AI infra and GPUs] are making a rational decision, because the downside of being behind is that you’re out of position for the most important technology for the next 10-15 years.”
On the Work-Bench front, we’re excited to announce that we led ShiftRx’s $3.5M Seed round 🎉 ShiftRx is an Austin-based, AI-driven staffing platform that combats the intensifying healthcare staffing shortage by unifying sourcing, hiring, onboarding, and compensation for pharmacists. Co-founders Autumn-Kyoko Cushman and Leann Haddad have a truly inspiring story – from meeting in high school while their fathers were undergoing chemotherapy and pursuing careers across healthcare to serving in the military and using fax to get their first users.
Jess and Danny will be in Austin next week, so if you’re a local enterprise founder raising a Pre-Seed or Seed round - reach out to meetup!
As a follow up to last week's news:
Google/Wiz Acquisition: Wiz walks away from $23B deal
Crowdstrike Outage: CrowdStrike blames test software for taking down 8.5 million Windows machines and how organizations are preparing for the next worldwide tech outage
📚 Read more news:
Fast Company: AI Creates More Work and Longer Hours For Some Employees. Is the Productivity Boom Over-Hyped?
TechCrunch: With Google in Its Sights, OpenAI Unveils SearchGPT
📚 Read more (th)reads:
Company: ParadeDB
Role: Rust database engineer to own analytics-in-postgres work. This person is ideally a founder-profile type engineer/founding-engineer who knows Rust, Postgres or DBs, is hungry, and can wear many hats. Reach out here.
Technology: Postgres for Search & Analytics
Funding: Unannounced
🌟 Company of the Week 🌟
Rift raises $5M led by Sequoia Capital
Sales / Marketing • Seed • San Francisco, CA
Co-Founders: Fil Twarowski (CEO), Edvard Eriksson
Elly Analytics raises $1M led by Altair Capital and PTV Ventures
Sales / Marketing • Seed • Palo Alto, CA
Workstaff raises $1.2M led by Investissement Québec and Anges Québec
HR Tech • Seed • Montréal, Canada
NetFabric raises $2.2M led by Founderful and Playfair Capital
Infrastructure / Dev Tools • Pre-Seed • Zurich, Switzerland
Aviato raises $2.3M led by 8VC, Soma Capital, and SoftBank
Data / AI / Machine Learning • Seed • San Francisco, CA
Noded AI raises $4M led by Boldstart Ventures
Collaboration / Productivity • Seed • San Francisco, CA
Language I/O raises $5M led by Gutbrain Ventures
Sales / Marketing • Venture • Cheyenne, WY
Powder raises $5M led by YC, General Catalyst, and Others
Data / AI / Machine Learning • Seed • Los Altos, CA
Promptfoo raises $5M led by Andreessen Horowitz
Risk / Security • Seed • San Mateo, CA
ZEST Security raises $5M led by Hanaco Ventures and Silvertech Ventures
Risk / Security • Seed • New York, NY
Cypris raises $5.3M led by Vocap Partners
Data / AI / Machine Learning • Venture • New York, NY
Vijil raises $6M led by AIStart, Gradient Ventures and Others
Data / AI / Machine Learning • Venture • Menlo Park, CA
Heeler Security raises $8.5M led by Norwest Venture Partners
Risk / Security • Seed • Bethesda, MD
Uplimit raises $11M led by Salesforce Ventures
Future of Work • Series A • San Francisco, CA
Momentum raises $13M led by FirstMark Capital
Sales / Marketing • Series A • San Francisco, CA
Code Metal raises $13M led by Shield Capital
Data / AI / Machine Learning • Seed • Boston, MA
Archera raises $17M led by HighSage Ventures
Infrastructure / Dev Tools • Series B • Seattle, WA
Lakera raises $20M led by Atomico
Risk / Security • Series A • Zurich, Switzerland
Link raises $27M led by Index Ventures and Cyberstarts
Risk / Security • Series A • Tel Aviv, Israel
QA Wolf raises $36M led by Scale Venture Partners
Infrastructure / Dev Tools • Series B • Seattle, WA
Level AI raises $39.4M led by Adams Street Partners
Sales / Marketing • Series C • Mountain View, CA
Dazz raises $50M led by Greylock Partners, Insight Partners, Index Ventures and Others
Risk / Security • Venture • Palo Alto, CA
Harvey raises $100M led by GV
Future of Work • Series C • San Francisco, CA
Headway raises $100M led by Spark Capital
HR Tech • Series D • New York, NY
Chainguard raises $140M led by Redpoint Ventures, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and IVP
Risk / Security • Series C • Kirkland, WA
Vanta raises $150M led by Sequoia Capital
Risk / Security • Series C • San Francisco, CA
Cohere raises $500M led by PSP Investments
Data / AI / Machine Learning • Series D • San Francisco, CA
Clio raises $900M led by NEA
Future of Work • Series F • Vancouver, Canada