Once again, Salesforce Projects 1 — SaleVenture Capital: Doubles the size of its AI commitments, which now total $1 billion.
The tech giant’s investment arm has announced a recent $500 million AI fund — adding to the AI fund announced last 12 months.
In March 2023, Salesforce Ventures announced it will launch a recent $250 million generative AI fund to explore promising generative AI startups. The company announced at its TrailblazerDX event that it will initially invest in 4 AI corporations — Anthropic, Cohere, Campfire.AI AND you.com.
Just three months later, the company announced it was doubling the size of its AI Fund to $500 million.
The latest fund once again shows the insatiable appetite of investors—especially corporations—for all things AI. While enterprise capital funding was a hot topic in August, AI led all sectors in capital raised, with startups raising $4.3 billion, or about 24% of total enterprise funding, in accordance with Crunchbase.
Salesforce Ventures has helped those numbers. Just last month, it invested in corporations like AI Kit AND Protect AIIn total, the investment arm participated in 10 transactions involving corporations related to artificial intelligence, in accordance with Crunchbase data.
More money
Salesforce Ventures wasn’t the only company to have funding news earlier this week. The private equity firm Insight Partners is near closing a recent fund price greater than $10 billion — about half of its original goal, The Financial Times reported that.
The fund could eventually reach about $12 billion, the report said.
Insight has been in the news recently for a pair of exits. Just last week, the bank card giant MasterCard agreed to purchase a threat intelligence company Recorded Futures from Insight Partners for $2.65 billion. The deal represents a nice return for the private equity firm, which bought the startup in 2019 for $780 million.
Every week earlier, one other portfolio company, Ownwas sold to Salesforce for $1.9 billion.