Amid a recession in venture capital, spring seems to have come for startups businesses advertising artificial intelligence technology.
Before a startup has customers, a business plan, or even an official brand name, ex researchers of Google AI, Niki Parmar and Ashish Vaswani, had interest from investors who wanted to back the next idea in artificial intelligence.
At Google, Ms. Parmar and Mr. Vaswani were among the co-authors of an important work of 2017 that helped pave the way for the explosion of so-called genetic artificial intelligence.
Earlier this year, just weeks after they went solo to raise capital for their fledgling company (now called Essential AI). They were able to raise about $50 million, people familiar with the company said.
Although most of its venture capital ecosystem Valley remains dormant, investors this year have poured capital into companies like Essential that specialize in artificial intelligence production systems. Many of the companies receiving funding are new and haven't proven they can do anything.
Analysts at research firm PitchBook estimate that the market for such AI applications in business technology alone will grow to $98 billion by 2026 and reach $43 billion this year.
But it also works the other way around, see supply-demand.
The sudden influx of capital is also encouraging too many AI researchers, some with no management or operational experience, to start their own companies, boosting competition, aiming for the easy profit of course.
