Salesforce Ventures Doubles Down on Generative AI Fund

Editor’s Note: AI Cloud, Einstein GPT, and other cloud GPT products are now Einstein. For the latest on Salesforce Einstein, go here.

Editor’s note: This story was originally published in March 2023, but was updated in June 2023 to reflect changes to the fund.

Salesforce Ventures is expanding its Generative AI Fund, doubling the $250 million fund to $500 million as part of its continuing commitment to bolster the AI startup ecosystem and spark the development of responsible generative AI. Salesforce Ventures has also increased the number of AI innovators in the fund, adding Humane and Tribble to its AI startup ecosystem. 

“We are already seeing AI change the way the world works, and we’re excited to build on the momentum of our Generative AI Fund,” said Paul Drews, Managing Partner, Salesforce Ventures. “Expanding our Generative AI Fund enables us to work with even more entrepreneurs who are accelerating the development of transformative AI solutions for the enterprise, and we are excited to support the next generation of innovative founders.” 

The Generative AI Fund has already invested in several top AI companies, including Hearth and You.com. Most recently, the fund announced further investments in Anthropic and Cohere. 

Soundbites: 

• “This transformative partnership through investment with Salesforce gives us the opportunity to bridge the gap between consumers and enterprise, fueled by the remarkable capabilities of AI,” said Bethany Bongiorno, CEO, Humane, and Imran Chaudhri, Chairman and President, Humane. “Together, our aim is to reimagine the way businesses engage with their customers, creating personalized, intelligent experiences that not only captivate individuals but also elevate the efficiency and productivity of enterprise operations.”

• “Tribble’s vision is to usher in a new age of go-to-market productivity with generative AI. We are building AI agents to transform how sales, marketing, and product teams work together. Working with Salesforce Ventures and a company like Salesforce that embodies innovation is a critical step in recognizing our vision,” said Sunil Rao, CEO, Tribble. 

Learn more:

• Read the AI Cloud announcement here
• Check out the AI for Impact Accelerator news here 
• Get the latest news about AI + Data + CRM here
• See how Einstein, Salesforce’s AI technology, delivers 1 trillion AI-powered predictions every week here
• Read new research on trusted AI here 
• Tune in to AI Day on Salesforce+

Salesforce Ventures Launches $250M Generative AI Fund

Salesforce Ventures, the company’s global investment arm, today launched a new $250 million generative AI fund to bolster the startup ecosystem and spark the development of responsible generative AI. 

Why this matters: More than two-thirds of leaders will be prioritizing generative AI over the next 18 months, but technical and ethical concerns with the technology remain a top concern. 

The details: Announced at TrailblazerDX, the fund will initially invest in four companies, including Anthropic, Cohere, Hearth.AI, and You.com. 

• Each has demonstrated an ability to meaningfully transform application software and impact end users’ workflows using responsible and trusted development processes. 

Soundbites:

• “Salesforce Ventures has been investing in high-potential enterprise technology businesses for more than a decade, and these initial investments from the fund in generative AI companies fit squarely into that strategy,” said John Somorjai, EVP Corporate Development and Salesforce Ventures at Salesforce.

This fund will accelerate our commitment to fostering the next generation of innovation and we’re excited to see how these companies reinvent how the world works.

• “We’re excited to partner with Salesforce to bring our trustworthy, conversational AI assistant Claude to more businesses in a responsible and ethical way. Anthropic and Salesforce share a vision for creating innovative technology that is rooted in safety, and we’re looking forward to introducing more useful AI services into the world,” said Daniela Amodei, President, Anthropic.

• “Cohere is committed to empowering all businesses to build incredible products with world-leading language AI. We continue to pave the way for the broad adoption of natural language processing technology, providing every developer and enterprise with the ability to explore, generate, and search in a more natural way than ever before. We are excited to partner with Salesforce on innovative new applications to bring this technology to their enterprise customers,” said Aidan Gomez, Co-Founder & CEO, Cohere.
  
• “Hearth AI is building a new category of next-gen products centered on agentic relationship management. We can’t be more excited to partner with Salesforce — the CRM category giant — to build a world where AI helps us understand and act on our networks, creating more matched opportunities and connection,” said Ashe Magalhaes, Founder, Hearth AI. 

• “We’re excited to partner with Salesforce Ventures in this new era of responsible generative AI. With our suite of generative AI apps and products, business users can accomplish more – find people across social media, summarize complex topics, and code in different programming languages, create novel copy-right free images, and write blogs and marketing copy with AI. We invite you to join forces with You.com as we continue to pave the way for the future of do-engines and enhanced productivity,” said Richard Socher, Founder and CEO, You.com.

Explore further

• Learn about Salesforce’s new generative AI product here.
• Read Salesforce’s five guidelines for responsible development of generative AI. 
• Take a deep dive into generative AI’s promises and perils in this article.

About Salesforce Ventures 

Salesforce Ventures helps enterprising founders build companies that reinvent the way the world works. Since 2009, we’ve invested in and partnered with more than 400 of the world’s most tenacious enterprise software companies from seed to IPO, including Airtable, Databricks, DocuSign, Guild Education, Hopin, monday.com, nCino, Snowflake, Snyk, Stripe, Tanium, and Zoom. Salesforce Ventures leverages our decades of expertise in the cloud and our long-term relationships with key decision-makers at thousands of businesses around the world to give our portfolio companies an unfair advantage, help them build credibility, and accelerate growth. Salesforce Ventures has invested in more than 30 countries with offices all over the world including in San Francisco, Irvine, New York, London, Tokyo, and Sydney. Follow@SalesforceVC and learn more at http://www.salesforceventures.com.