Funding to AI-related companies has tripled in the last 5 years, and this trend seems to be growing. In 2013 alone, $581M was invested in 142 deals.
Google y Facebook como protagonistas
Technology companies Google and Facebook are investing in the sector with the aim of understanding and learning from the world of images, texts and videos that accumulate on the internet.
In January of 2014, Google paid $400M for DeepMind, a company dedicated to research in the field of artificial intelligence, supported by FundersFund.
"The acquisition of DeepMind is in large part one of the famous acqui-hires with which big companies manage to buy talent. The London-based company is founded by Demis Hassabis, who has been described as "probably the best game player in history" at the Mind Sports Olympiad," says Diego Gutierrez, the group's alternative finance expert from Abra- Invest.
In March, Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's CEO, participated in a $40M round in VicariousThe San Francisco-based company, which since its founding, has received 3 rounds of funding for a total amount of $60M.
Staged funding
Over the last two years, three quarters of the offerings have been in seed and Series A companies, although in 2013 there has been considerable growth in investment in more advanced companies.
Narrative Science and Cortica are 2 examples of companies that have received later stage rounds.
Narrative Science, a global leader in narrative analytics, which helps organisations analyse data and transform it into narrative reports, received a $$11.5M round last September from Jump Capital, SAP Ventures, Battery Ventures and Northwestern University.
Cortica, an image recognition startup received this March 2013 a $20M round from Horizons Ventures and mail.ru group.
Artificial Intelligence in Spain
In Spain, although gradually, there have also been several operations in the sector in recent years.
One of the most talked-about has been the purchase of the Sevillian technology firm Indisys for Intel in November 2013, Indisys is dedicated to developing intelligent agents that enable conversations across multiple languages, devices and platforms.
"Intel already owned 40% of the company after entering into a capital increase 3.2 million euros in November 2012. At the same time, the Catalan venture capital fund Inveready controlled another 10% and the company had minority partners such as Ken Morse, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)," says Diego Gutierrez.
Cognicor, based in Barcelona and led by India's Sinduh Joseph, closed a €750,000 funding round in November 2013. The company, which is developing a user-business complaint centre project using software and artificial intelligence, is accelerated and owned 10%- by Wayra and in 2013 won the IE Venture Network startup event.
Artificial Solutionsa leading natural language interaction company, with development centres in Barcelona, Hamburg and London, received its second round from Scope Capital Advisory for $9.4M.
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