Highlights:

  • The Writer primarily helps businesses implement large language models for content generation across various departments.
  • The company has also built a knowledge graph to support businesses in enhancing their expertise using proprietary data.

According to Bloomberg, Writer Inc., a startup in generative AI, has closed on an unexpectedly large USD 100 million early-stage funding round, valuing it at USD 500 million.

Iconiq Growth recently led a series B round, in which other investors, including WndrCo, Balderton Capital, Insight Partners—which led the series A round—and Aspect Ventures—which led the seed round—also participated. Several of Writer’s clients, including Accenture Plc and Vanguard Group Inc., also participated in the round.

Writer’s primary focus is assisting businesses with implementing and using large language models to produce content across various departments, including operations, marketing, human resources, product, and sales teams.

It claims in a press release that it has also developed various generative AI models for particular industries, including one that is tailored for use in the healthcare sector. This is a rather unusual selling point for Writer in a crowded market where its products’ “black box” nature is frequently criticized. For example, OpenAI LP’s GPT-4, which powers ChatGPT, is a single model that is said to be capable of performing tasks in various industries. However, the drawback is that businesses must train and fine-tune it in advance for the best results.

Including Palmyra Small, which has 128 million parameters, Palmyra Base (5 billion parameters), and Palmyra Large (20 billion parameters), Writer offers a total of 14 different AI models. Writer claims that these models can assist businesses with everything from producing content and emails to transcription and summarization of audio. With its thorough understanding of medical terminology, for instance, its healthcare-focused model, PalmyraMed is made to carry out those tasks for clients in the healthcare and medical sectors.

Another significant benefit of Writer’s platform, in Writer’s estimation, is that its models are trained on more than 1 trillion tokens of formal and business writing that are free of any intellectual property or copyrighted material. On the Stanford HELM benchmarking tests for Massive Multitask Language Understanding, BooIQ, and Natural Questions, Writer claims Palmyra Large outperforms competing models from OpenAI, Cohere Inc., Anthropic, Google LLC, and other companies.

Writer, however, is more than just its AI models. Additionally, the startup has developed a knowledge graph that aids businesses in building models using their own confidential data to advance their expertise. Additionally, it provides a variety of prebuilt applications, such as chatbots, with premade templates for the various functions they can carry out.

Because of this, businesses don’t need a lot of expertise to start using Writer’s offerings and boosting productivity. For instance, users of the Writer’s Recaps application can quickly summarize and highlight the key points of meetings and calls by dragging and dropping the recordings of the events into a box.

Given its adaptability, it may come as no surprise that Writer claims it has been able to increase its revenue by more than ten times in the past two years. However, it didn’t provide any additional information. It mentioned well-known clients in its press release, including Spotify Inc., Uber Technologies Inc., and L’Oreal SA.

The funds will be used to add more AI models and develop new features for its current ones, according to Writer, which closed on a USD 5 million seed round in 2020 and a USD 21 million Series A round in 2021. It wants to develop a “full stack” of business-friendly AI software programs to make it easier for people to use its technology.

This funding round is the latest in a series of substantial investments in generative AI startups this year. Last month, Anthropic secured USD 100 million in a funding round led by SK Telecom Co. Ltd., following a USD 450 million Series C round in May. Other companies like Cohere and AI21 Labs Inc. have recently announced significant funding rounds. Meanwhile, OpenAI remains a leader in the industry, having received a staggering USD 10 billion investment from Microsoft Corp. in January.

Numerous funding rounds have taken place this year, and additional rounds will probably occur before the year concludes.