To many, AI and the cloud go hand in hand. The Cloud 100 List, recently put together by Forbes showcases the sector’s best privately-held companies. Scattered throughout the list are businesses fuelled by AI. OpenAI and Databricks lead the industry with AI tools. Fintech brand Stripe sits high on the list, as does Canva, who’ve been embedding AI capabilities within their software. For Grammarly, another big name, AI is central to their offering. So, if all these companies are getting behind AI, why are they so sure of its abilities?
Anthropic’s Rapid Growth
Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, a company included as number 73 on the list, said of AI…
“The feeling I get talking to customers is everyone feels like this is a technology of transformation targeted specifically at their industry,” …“Except, it’s targeted specifically at every industry.”
The AI boom is creating huge growth for companies experimenting with the new technology, like Anthropic who run Claude, their answer to ChatGPT. It’s thought that while the generalised tech sector is becoming fairly stagnant, AI stands out for its potential and volatility. It’s attracting serious attention along with skyrocketing company valuations and investments.
Anthropic only began offering their service to customers in February, but due to said AI boom, claim to have secured hundreds of paying customers from a range of sectors. Only months after launching, Anthropic raised $450 million in funding. It’s thought the company is now worth $5 billion.
Is AI Really Here To Stay?
According to Bessemer data 55% of cloud companies have launched AI features in the last year. It’s clear that AI is becoming a central tenet for many cloud companies’ strategies. What once was a new, almost scary technology has now, very quickly, become a relatively mainstream idea, that business leaders feel confident investing in.
Ali Ghodsi, co-founder and CEO of Databricks, put it like this…
“This year, there has been a complete revolution in awareness,” … “AI went from being abstract to becoming concrete.”
Clément Delangue, Cofounder and CEO of Hugging Face, a company that was recently valued at $4 billion, spoke about the change in his company’s patrons…
“Before, [users] were more tech-focused companies,”.. “Now, it’s everyone.”… “It’s not crazy anymore to think that in five years most of the cloud spend will be related to AI,”
Conclusion
Despite recent financial issues for cloud providers, innovative companies continue to attract investment and the excitement for the sector does not appear to be faltering. Cloud and AI start-ups are securing huge amounts of funding even with relatively small teams. It’s looking like, even given the financial blip some cloud companies are experiencing, there are no signs of AI losing momentum. Do you think the attention given to the sector is justified?
