wp-plugin-hostgator domain was triggered too early. This is usually an indicator for some code in the plugin or theme running too early. Translations should be loaded at the init action or later. Please see Debugging in WordPress for more information. (This message was added in version 6.7.0.) in /home4/scienrds/scienceandnerds/wp-includes/functions.php on line 6114ol-scrapes domain was triggered too early. This is usually an indicator for some code in the plugin or theme running too early. Translations should be loaded at the init action or later. Please see Debugging in WordPress for more information. (This message was added in version 6.7.0.) in /home4/scienrds/scienceandnerds/wp-includes/functions.php on line 6114Source:https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2023\/05\/15\/together-raises-20m-to-build-open-source-generative-ai-models\/<\/a><\/br> Generative AI \u2014 AI that can write essays, create artwork and music, and more \u2014 continues to attract outsize investor attention. According to one source, generative AI startups raised $1.7 billion in Q1 2023, with an additional $10.68 billion worth of deals announced<\/a> in the quarter but not yet completed.<\/p>\n There\u2019s scores of competition, including<\/a> incumbents like OpenAI and Anthropic. But despite that, VCs aren\u2019t shying away from untested players and up-and-comers.<\/p>\n Case in point, Together<\/a>, a startup developing open source generative AI, today announced that it raised $20 million \u2014 on the larger side for a seed round \u2014 led by Lux Capital with participation from Factory, SV Angel, First Round Capital, Long Journey Ventures, Robot Ventures, Definition Capital, Susa Ventures, Cadenza Ventures and SCB 10x. Several high-profile angel investors were also involved, including Scott Banister, one of the co-founders of PayPal, and Jeff Hammerbacher, a Cloudera founding employee.<\/p>\n \u201cTogether is spearheading AI\u2019s \u2018Linux moment\u2019 by providing an open ecosystem across compute and best in class foundation models,\u201d Lux Capital\u2019s Brandon Reeves told TechCrunch via email. \u201cTogether team is committed to creating a vibrant open ecosystem that allows anyone from individuals to enterprises to participate.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Together, launched in June 2022, is the brainchild of Vipul Ved Prakash, Ce Zhang, Chris Re and Percy Liang. Prakash previously founded social media search platform Topsy, which was acquired<\/a> in 2013 by Apple, where he later became a senior director. Zhang is an associate professor of computer science at ETH Zurich, currently on sabbatical and leading research in \u201cdecentralized\u201d AI. As for Re, he\u2019s co-founded various startups, including SambaNova<\/a>, which builds hardware and integrated systems for AI. And Liang, a computer science professor at Stanford, directs the university\u2019s Center for Research on Foundation Models (CRFM).<\/p>\n With Together, Prakash, Zhang, Re and Liang are seeking to create open source generative AI models and services that, in their words, \u201chelp organizations incorporate AI into their production applications.\u201d To that end, Together is building a cloud platform for running, training and fine-tuning open source models that the co-founders claim will offer scalable compute at \u201cdramatically lower\u201d prices than the dominant vendors (e.g., Google Cloud, AWS, Azure).<\/p>\n \u201cWe believe that generative models are a consequential technology for society and open and decentralized alternatives to closed systems are going to be critical to enable the best outcomes for AI and society,\u201d Prakash told TechCrunch in an email interview. \u201cAs enterprises define their generative AI strategies, they\u2019re looking for privacy, transparency, customization and ease of deployment. Current cloud offerings, with closed-source models and data, do not meet their requirements.\u201d<\/p>\n He has a point \u2014 insofar as incumbents are feeling the pressure, at least. An internal Google memo leaked<\/a> earlier in the month implies that the search giant \u2014 and its rivals, for that matter \u2014 can\u2019t compete against open source AI initiatives over the long run. Meanwhile, OpenAI reportedly is preparing to publicly debut its first open source text-generating AI model amid a proliferation of open source alternatives.<\/p>\n One of Together\u2019s first projects, RedPajama<\/a>, aims to foster a set of open source generative models, including \u201cchat\u201d models along the lines of OpenAI\u2019s ChatGPT<\/a>. A collaborative work between Together and several groups, including the MILA Qu\u00e9bec AI Institute, CRFM and ETH\u2019s data science lab, DS3Lab, RedPajama began with the release of a dataset that enables organizations to pretrain models that can be permissively licensed.<\/p>\n Together\u2019s other efforts to date include GPT-JT, a fork of the open source text-generating model GPT-J-6B (released by the research group EleutherAI<\/a>), and OpenChatKit<\/a>, an attempt at a ChatGPT equivalent.<\/p>\n \u201cToday, training, fine-tuning or productizing open source generative models is extremely challenging,\u201d Prakash said. \u201cCurrent solutions require that you have significant expertise in AI and are simultaneously able to manage the large-scale infrastructure needed. The Together platform takes care of both challenges out-of-the-box, with an easy-to-use and accessible solution.\u201d<\/p>\n Just how seamless Together is remains to be seen, though \u2014 the platform has yet to launch in GA. And, one might argue, its efforts are a bit duplicative in the context of the broader AI landscape. The number of open source models both from community groups and large labs grows by the day<\/a>, practically. And while not all are licensed for commercial use, several, like Databricks\u2019 Dolly 2.0<\/a>, are.<\/p>\n On the AI hardware infrastructure front, besides the big public cloud providers, startups like CoreWeave<\/a> claim to offer powerful compute for below market rates. There\u2019s even been attempts<\/a> at building community-powered, free services for running AI text-generating models. (Together intends to follow in the footsteps of these community groups by building a platform, tentatively called the Together Decentralized Cloud, that\u2019ll pool hardware resources, including GPUs from volunteers around the internet.)<\/p>\n So what does Together bring to the table? Greater transparency, control and privacy, Prakash argues. It\u2019s a sales pitch not dissimilar to the one made by startup Stability AI<\/a>, which funnels compute and capital toward open source research while commercializing \u2014 and selling services on top of \u2014 the various finished products.<\/p>\n \u201cRegulated enterprises will be big customers of open source, as open source models pre-trained on open data sets enable organizations to fully inspect, understand and customize the models to their own applications,\u201d he said. \u201cWe believe that the challenges in AI can only be overcome by a global community working together. So we made it our mission to build and steward a self-sustaining, open ecosystem that produces the best AI systems for humanity.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s a lofty goal, to be sure. And it\u2019s early days for Together, which wouldn\u2019t say whether it has any customers at present \u2014 much less revenue. But the company is forging ahead, planning to increase the size of its team from 24 employees to around 40 by the end of the year and spend the rest of the seed capital on R&D, infrastructure and product development.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Together solution, based on open source generative models, was built on understanding requirements from large organizations and addressing each of these needs, to provide enterprises with the core platform for their generative AI strategy,\u201d Prakash said. \u201cTogether is seeing tremendous interest from enterprises looking for greater transparency, control, and privacy.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n <\/br><\/br><\/br><\/p>\n
\nTogether raises $20M to build open source generative AI models<\/br>
\n2023-05-16 22:34:06<\/br><\/p>\n