SandboxAQ Raises Over $300 Million, Valued at $5.6 Billion for Quantum AI Development

Quantum AI startup SandboxAQ valued at $5.3 billion after $300 million fundraising

(Reuters) -SandboxAQ said on Wednesday it has raised more than $300 million in funding, valuing the startup spun off from Alphabet at $5.6 billion, as it aims to fast-track the development of advanced artificial intelligence systems for computation. The new funding, from investors including New York-based investment firm Fred Alger Management, T. Rowe Price, and Breyer Capital, will be used to accelerate the development of its large quantitative models (LQMs) and other AI applications in industries from healthcare to finance. This follows a $500 million fundraising last year to build its quantum computing platform to serve business customers. SandboxAQ says its AI technology differs from the large language models that power ChatGPT in the generative AI wave. Instead of training on a huge number of language tokens, its models train on large numerical data. "The majority of the economy is actually not based on language. It's actually based on quantitative relationships," said Jack Hidary, CEO at SandboxAQ. The Palo Alto, California-based company plans to invest the capital in building news modules for specific use cases for big enterprise customers, from drug discovery to materials science, Hidary said. Breyer Capital founder and CEO Jim Breyer, an early backer in SandboxAQ, said the company can train quantitative models on existing hardware like Nvidia GPUs. It could also benefit from future breakthroughs in the quantum chip space. Google, for example, said earlier this month that its new chip called Willow has overcome a key challenge in quantum computing, prompting its shares to jump. SandboxAQ was spun off from Alphabet as an independent startup in 2022, with former Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt as chairman. The company caters to various sectors such as cybersecurity, encryption and life sciences. (Reporting by Priyanka.G in Bengaluru and Krystal Hu in Toronto; Editing by Shilpi Majumdar and Sandra Maler)

AI startup SandboxAQ raises over $300M at $5.6B valuation By Investing.com

Investing.com -- SandboxAQ, a startup specializing in applying quantum technology to AI development, has successfully raised over $300 million. The funding round has increased the company's valuation to more than $5.6 billion. The new funds will be utilized to recruit more engineers to further the company's mission. The company, chaired by former Google chief Eric Schmidt, was established less than three years ago as a spin-off from Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL) Inc. SandboxAQ has established partnerships with corporate giants such as Accenture (NYSE:ACN) and Deloitte to expand its customer base. Investment firm Alger and Yann LeCun, a well-known name in the AI field, are among the new investors participating in the latest funding round. Existing backers also include T. Rowe Price, Breyer Capital, Thomas Tull's USIT, and Schmidt himself, as announced by the company in a statement on Wednesday. SandboxAQ is carving out a niche in the rapidly growing field of AI innovation, a top priority for tech venture capital. The company sets itself apart by adopting different methods from prevailing approaches, such as those used by OpenAI. Currently, SandboxAQ runs quantum physics algorithms on graphics processing units, but plans to transition to more advanced machines in the future.

Alphabet-spinoff SandboxAQ valued at $5.3 billion after $300 million fundraising

(Reuters) - SandboxAQ said on Wednesday it has raised more than $300 million in funding, valuing the startup spun off from Alphabet at $5.3 billion, as it aims to fast-track the development of advanced artificial intelligence systems for computation. This follows a $500 million fundraising last year to help customers prepare for a quantum computing future. The new funding was raised to "accelerate the development of its large quantitative models (LQMs) and other AI applications in drug discovery, materials science, chemistry, cybersecurity, navigation and medical devices", the company said. LQMs are advanced AI systems, designed to offer a way to simulate and predict complex science and business problems for large industries. Existing and new investors, including Fred Alger Management, T. Rowe Price Associates, Parkway Venture Capital, Breyer Capital, US Innovative Technology Fund, Ava Investments and IQT, participated in the funding round. SandboxAQ was spun off from Alphabet as an independent startup in 2022, with Jack Hidary as its CEO and former Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt as chairman. The company caters to various sectors such as cybersecurity, encryption and life sciences. (Reporting by Priyanka.G in Bengaluru; Editing by Shilpi Majumdar)

Alphabet-spinoff SandboxAQ valued at $5.3 bln after $300 mln fundraising

Dec 18 (Reuters) - SandboxAQ said on Wednesday it has raised more than $300 million in funding, valuing the startup spun off from Alphabet (GOOGL.O), opens new tab at $5.3 billion, as it aims to fast-track the development of advanced artificial intelligence systems for computation. This follows a $500 million fundraising last year to help customers prepare for a quantum computing future. The new funding was raised to "accelerate the development of its large quantitative models (LQMs) and other AI applications in drug discovery, materials science, chemistry, cybersecurity, navigation and medical devices", the company said. LQMs are advanced AI systems, designed to offer a way to simulate and predict complex science and business problems for large industries. Existing and new investors, including Fred Alger Management, T. Rowe Price Associates, Parkway Venture Capital, Breyer Capital, US Innovative Technology Fund, Ava Investments and IQT, participated in the funding round. SandboxAQ was spun off from Alphabet as an independent startup in 2022, with Jack Hidary as its CEO and former Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt as chairman. The company caters to various sectors such as cybersecurity, encryption and life sciences. Reporting by Priyanka.G in Bengaluru; Editing by Shilpi Majumdar Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab Suggested Topics:Technology

AI Startup SandboxAQ Raises Funds at Over $5.6 Billion Valuation

SandboxAQ has raised over $300 million at a valuation of more than $5.6 billion, which will help the startup recruit more engineers for an effort to apply quantum technology and techniques to AI development. Chaired by former Google chief Eric Schmidt, the company was spun out from Alphabet Inc. less than three years ago and has partnerships with the likes of Accenture and Deloitte as it pursues corporate customers. Investment firm Alger and Yann LeCun are new investors participating in the latest round, alongside existing backers T. Rowe Price, Breyer Capital, Thomas Tull's USIT and Schmidt himself, the company said in a statement Wednesday.

SandboxAQ raises $300M at $5.6 billion valuation to develop AI and quantum technology - SiliconANGLE

SandboxAQ raises $300M at $5.6 billion valuation to develop AI and quantum technology SandboxAQ, a company that develops artificial intelligence and quantum sensing technology, announced today that it raised more than $300 million in new funding at a valuation of more than $5.6 billion to accelerate the development of specialized AI models. Investors participating in the round included former Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt, Salesforce Inc. founder Marc Benioff, Fred Alger Management, LLC, T. Rowe Price Associates, Inc., Mumtalakat, Parkway Venture Capital, Breyer Capital, Rizvi Traverse, S32, US Innovative Technology Fund and Ava Investments among others. Spun out of Alphabet Inc. in 2022, SandboxAQ's name refers to "A" for AI and "Q" for quantum. The company intends to build and develop new AI models known as large quantitate models and support AI applications in science, chemistry, drug discovery, navigation, cybersecurity, and medical devices. LQMs differ from large language models in that they are trained on data generated by SandboxAQ using physics-based methodology. Whereas LLMs, such as OpenAI's popular ChatGPT, use language and text data as their basis for understanding logic and reasoning. "Large Quantitative Models are the next wave of AI as they provide a powerful ability to solve science and business problems for large industries including aerospace, biopharma, chemicals, defense, energy, finance, and more," said Jack Hidary, CEO of SandboxAQ. In drug discovery, SandboxAQ trains its LQMs on computational orthogonal models, computational chemistry methods, predictive modeling and proprietary knowledge graphs to provide unique views of molecules. According to the company this provides the models a way to accurately represent complex biological systems. For materials science and chemistry, the company produces its own training data using physics-based computer modeling to create high-quality data, which is extremely scarce. This allows materials engineers to accelerate the time to the discovery of novel materials by using LQMs trained and fine-tuned on this physical data. The objective of the company is not to do away with LLMs for these discoveries, Hidary explained, but to supplement them with the complex solving power of LQMs, which can reveal insights into these highly intricate systems. Among the company's achievements, SandboxAQ announced a breakthrough navigational platform called AQNav, which combines quantum sensors and AI algorithms with a map of Earth's magnetic field. It provides an unjammable, all-weather navigation solution that will work even when GPS is unavailable.

Quantum-Focused AI Firm SandboxAQ Surpasses $5 Billion Valuation Goal | PYMNTS.com

Tech-focused venture capital companies have made AI a priority, and SandboxAQ tries to stand out by adopting methods that differ from the approaches used by companies such as OpenAI, according to the report. The company runs quantum physics algorithms on graphics processing units (GPUs), with the goal of moving to more advanced machines, the report said. "Our software today can run on GPUs, and in the future, we can also start to incorporate quantum processing units, QPUs," CEO Jack Hidary said in an interview, per Bloomberg. "At SandboxAQ, the AQ stands for AI and quantum. PYMNTS explored SandboxAQ's efforts earlier this year in a conversation with Chris Hume, the company's senior director of business operations. "The physical world is defined by quantum mechanics," he said. "The more effectively we can understand those interactions and then model those interactions, the more efficiently and effectively you can build predictive models. With the algorithms that we're developing combined with the classical computer hardware that's available today, you can build better predictive models, and that's the exciting part. And that's the opportunity at hand." In other AI news, PYMNTS examined Wednesday the breakthroughs and barriers surrounding AI, as new models deliver mixed signals about the pace of this technology's progress.