Generative AI enterprises are continually securing substantial funding to support their commercial and, in some instances, open-source endeavors. One such startup is See Together, focused on developing open-source generative AI and AI model development infrastructure. The company recently announced the closure of a significant $102.5 million Series A funding round, led by Kleiner Perkins and featuring contributions from Nvidia and Emergence Capital. This funding, surpassing the company’s previous round by over five times, will be directed towards the expansion of Together’s cloud platform. This platform enables developers to construct applications using open and customized AI models, as explained by Vipul Ved Prakash, the co-founder, and CEO.
In a blog post, Prakash highlighted the growing interest among startups and enterprises in establishing a generative AI strategy devoid of dependence on a single vendor. He emphasized the importance of open-source AI as a robust foundation for applications, asserting that generative AI is a platform technology with far-reaching implications for society. According to Prakash, the AI ecosystem will comprise both proprietary and open models, underscoring the significance of providing choices and options for the future.
Together, founded in June 2022 by Prakash along with Ce Zhang, Chris Re, and Percy Liang, aims to contribute open-source models and services to facilitate the integration of AI into organizational applications. The company has developed a cloud platform offering scalable compute at lower costs compared to major vendors like Google Cloud, AWS, and Azure. The platform achieves cost reductions for interactive inference workloads on large models through optimization across various layers, including thousands of GPUs, virtualization software, scheduling, and model optimizations.
Currently operating across U.S. and EU datacenters, Together’s cloud spans servers provided by partners Crusoe Cloud and Vultr, delivering approximately 20 exaflops of compute in total. Notable customers include NexusFlow, Voyage AI, and Cartesia, some of whom leverage Together’s APIs for serving models. The company’s cloud service is complemented by Custom Models, a consulting offering that enables customers to bring their data to the platform, allowing Together’s team to design, build, and test custom models.
In addition to its cloud service, Together actively invests in open-source AI research, with projects like RedPajama, GPT-JT, and OpenChatKit, contributing to the broader AI community. The demand for generative AI is evident in the market, with investments projected to soar from $16 billion in the current year to a staggering $143 billion by 2027, according to IDC. Generative AI companies have captured a significant share of venture capital investments, securing about 40% of all startup rounds, amounting to $11.9 billion in the first half of 2023. However, challenges persist in the sector, as exemplified by the struggles faced by Stability AI, once a favored investment, which is reportedly exploring a sale due to financial difficulties.
