Writer Secures $200M Series C Funding, Reaching $1.9B Valuation in Generative AI Boom

Writer secures $200 million in Series C funding to boost AI expansion

November 12, 2024, marked a significant milestone for the generative AI landscape as Writer, a full-stack generative AI platform, announced it has raised $200 million in Series C funding, elevating its valuation to $1.9 billion. Co-led by Premji Invest and Radical Ventures, with participation from Salesforce Ventures, Adobe Ventures, Citi Ventures, IBM Ventures, and Workday Ventures, this capital infusion will accelerate Writer's expansion in the enterprise AI market. Writer's impressive financial journey now totals $326 million raised since its founding in 2020 by May Habib and Waseem AlShikh, who had a previous venture in product localization. The company aims not just at creating generative models but at developing robust AI systems to handle critical enterprise tasks seamlessly. Habib highlighted the company's ambition: "With this new funding, we're laser-focused on delivering the next generation of autonomous AI solutions that are secure, reliable, and adaptable in highly complex, real-world enterprise scenarios." This statement underlines the intensity and intent with which Writer is pushing forward its AI capabilities, especially in an evolving marketplace where security and reliability take center stage. The influx of capital will be utilized for product development initiatives aimed at enhancing Writer's suite of tools, including customizable AI guardrails and AI-powered agents capable of orchestrating complex workflows across various sectors such as healthcare, retail, and financial services. Writer's emphasis on these areas speaks volumes about its strategy to cater to industries facing the most intricate challenges within their operational frameworks. An intriguing aspect of the Series C funding is the involvement of high-profile investors and strategic partnerships, indicating a strong vote of confidence in Writer's business model. "Writer is a rare gem in the generative AI landscape," said Rob Toews of Radical Ventures, praising the company's exceptional growth trajectory and dedication to creating a full-stack AI platform. Writer's performance speaks for itself as it has quickly attracted prominent clients, including Mars, Ally Bank, Qualcomm, Salesforce, Uber, Accenture, L'Oréal, and Intuit. These partnerships are critical as companies increasingly look for integrated AI platforms that can drive productivity and deliver tangible returns on investment. In fact, Writer's clients reportedly save millions of hours in productivity, averaging a 9x return on their investment. As companies prioritize efficiency, Writer's versatility allows it to tailor applications specific to diverse organizational needs. Writer's current suite features the Palmyra family of models, which is designed for various enterprise applications, demonstrating the startup's adaptability in addressing market demands. Recent developments include the release of Palmyra X 004, a model trained predominantly on synthetic data, boasting cost efficiency in its development compared to traditional methods. "Writer provides a refined, AI-powered solution that's effective, easy to deploy, and has rapidly accelerated our workflows here at Salesforce," says Patrick Stokes, EVP of product and industries marketing at Salesforce, highlighting the tangible impact of Writer's offerings on their operations. Writer's growth comes amidst a booming market where generative AI is increasingly attracting investor attention. According to a report from Accel, generative AI startups are slated to receive 40% of all venture capital directed toward cloud technologies this year, with investments in this sector exceeding $3.9 billion in the first half of 2024 alone. Despite the competitive nature of the generative AI realm, Writer's unique approach, which combines a full-stack platform with customizable solutions, sets it apart from its competitors. This differentiation is crucial as enterprise clients seek reliable and compliant AI applications tailored to their specific needs. Writer's focus on security, ethical considerations, and compliance resonates particularly well in industries like finance, prompting notable endorsements from investors like Arvind Purushotham of Citi Ventures, who emphasized the importance of accuracy and security in AI tools for global financial institutions. With a strong foundation, a growing portfolio of enterprise clients, and continued investment in innovation, Writer is well-positioned to redefine how large-scale enterprises leverage AI. The potential of the generative AI market is vast, projected to exceed $1 trillion in revenue within the next decade, although challenges such as privacy concerns, copyright issues, and the intricacies of model reliability will need addressing. Writer's journey is a testament to the company's innovative approach in an ever-evolving sector, reflected in its solid backing from distinguished investors and a robust suite of AI solutions. As the digital landscape transforms, Writer could indeed become a cornerstone in enterprises' AI strategies globally.

Generative AI startup Writer raises $200M at a $1.9B valuation | TechCrunch

The round -- a Series C -- was co-led by Premji Invest, Radical Ventures, and ICONIQ Growth, with participation from Salesforce Ventures, Adobe Ventures, B Capital, Citi Ventures, IBM Ventures, and Workday Ventures. Writer CEO May Habib says that the new cash, which brings Writer's total raised to $326 million, will be put toward product development and "cementing the company's leadership in the enterprise generative AI category." "At Writer, we're not just creating models that can execute tasks but developing advanced AI systems that deliver mission-critical enterprise work," said Habib in a statement. "Today, hundreds of the world's largest companies are using Writer to deploy generative AI applications and agents that solve tough business challenges and produce unprecedented ROI. With this new funding, we're laser focused on delivering the next generation of autonomous AI solutions that are secure, reliable, and adaptable in highly complex, real-world enterprise scenarios." Writer was founded in 2020 by Habib and Waseem AlShikh. The company has grown over the years into a full-stack generative AI platform, with products that can be customized for various enterprise use cases. In 2023, Writer launched its own models, Palmyra, for text generation. Later that same year, the company debuted features that connect business data sources to its models and the ability for customers to self-host Writer-trained models. Writer's current focus is on "AI agents" that can plan and execute complex enterprise workflows across systems and teams, as well as customizable AI guardrails and a suite of no-code development tools. Despite the intense competition in the generative AI space, Writer has done quite well for itself. The company has hundreds of customers, including Mars, Ally Bank, Qualcomm, Salesforce, Uber, Accenture, L'Oreal, and Intuit. "There's a tremendous amount of engineering required to transform models into reliable business tools," Patrick Stokes, EVP of product and industries marketing at Salesforce, said in a press release. "Writer provides a refined, AI-powered solution that's effective, easy to deploy, and has rapidly accelerated our workflows here at Salesforce. We're excited to join them on this journey not only as an investor, but also as a customer." Accenture, Balderton, Insight Partners, and Vanguard also participated in Writer's Series C.

Writer reels in $200M for its generative AI toolkit - SiliconANGLE

Artificial intelligence startup Writer Inc. today disclosed that it has closed a $200 million Series C investment at a $1.9 billion valuation. Premji Invest, Radical Ventures and ICONIQ Growth led the round. They were joined by more than a half dozen other backers including the venture capital arms of Salesforce Inc., Adobe Inc., IBM Corp. and Workday Inc. The raise comes about a year after a $100 million Series B round that reportedly valued Writer at $500 million to $750 million. San Francisco-based Writer develops a series of large language models geared towards the enterprise market. The company's most advanced model, Palmyra X 004, debuted last month. The LLM significantly outperforms GPT-4o at tool use, meaning it more reliably performs tasks that require interacting with external applications such as databases. Palmyra X 004 supports prompts with up to 128,000 tokens. A token is a unit of data that holds a few characters or numbers. The LLM can write text, generate code and analyze user-provided datasets for useful patterns. Writer offers Palmyra X 004 alongside a number of domain-specific models. One LLM, Palmyra Fin, is optimized for financial tasks such as identifying investment risks and explaining market trends. Another LLM called Palmyra Med promises to speed up healthcare professionals' day-to-day work. Writer provides its LLMs alongside an offering called Knowledge Graph. It's a RAG, or retrieval-augmented generation, service that enables the company's models to incorporate data from external sources into their prompt responses. Knowledge Graph can give an AI access to information in PDFs, presentations, charts and other files. Under the hood, the service uses an LLM to identify how the records provided by a user are connected to one another. Writer says that this approach makes AI models powered by Knowledge Graph less susceptible to hallucinations. According to the company, the service also makes the LLMs it powers more adept at answering complex questions. "Our reasoning engine powers AI apps that have structured inputs and outputs, allowing you to fit Writer seamlessly into an existing workstream," Writer co-founder and Chief Executive Officer May Habib wrote in a blog post today. "It also powers agents that can work with other systems, think through complex tasks, and analyze your company data." Writer provides application programming interfaces that enable developers to integrate its LLMs and Knowledge Graph offering into their services. For business users, the company offers a no-code tool that makes it possible to create AI applications without any programming. Users can assemble their application's interface from prebuilt building blocks and customize details such as the style in which prompt responses are generated. To help customers quickly put its LLMs to use, Writer provides more than a half dozen prepackaged AI apps. Some are general-purpose tools geared towards tasks such as generating code. There are also more specialized applications, including one that can analyze marketing materials produced by financial institutions for regulatory compliance issues. Writer will use the proceeds from its newly announced funding round to expand its feature set. As a part of the effort, the company plans to release more AI applications for the healthcare, retail and financial sectors. Writer also plans to expand its LLM lineup with models that are more adapt at reasoning tasks.

AI Startup Writer Authors $200M Round At $1.9B Valuation

San Francisco-based Writer locked up a $200 million Series C that values the enterprise-focused generative AI platform at $1.9 billion. Writer's platform is designed to help businesses use large language models to improve workflows and offers AI solutions that can execute complex enterprise operations across systems and teams. The new cash will be used for the company's quick-start AI applications and agents for workflows in healthcare, retail and financial services. "At Writer, we're not just creating LLMs that can execute tasks but developing advanced AI systems that deliver mission-critical enterprise work," said co-founder and CEO May Habib. "With this new funding, we're laser focused on delivering the next generation of autonomous AI solutions that are secure, reliable, and adaptable in highly complex, real-world enterprise scenarios." Writer continues to grow its customer base, which includes names like Accenture, L'Oreal and Uber. Writer's new round is just the latest example of investors' never-ending thirst for all things AI. In October, AI was by far the leading sector in venture funding, with such startups seeing $12.2 billion in funding -- or 38% of total monthly funding.