附近上门

If you work in tech, you’ve heard about artificial intelligence: , , and which nations to prevent, or instigate, war.

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Our editorial bent is more clear cut: How much money is going into startups? Who is putting that money in? And what trends can we suss out about the health of the market over time?

So let鈥檚 talk about the state of AI startups and how much capital is being raised. Here’s what I can tell you: funding totals for AI startups are growing year-over-year; I just don鈥檛 know precisely how quickly. Regardless, startups are certainly raising massive sums of money off the buzzword.

To make that point, here are just a few of the biggest rounds announced and recorded by 附近上门 in 2018:

1. , a China-based startup that is quite good at tracking your face wherever it may be, raised a $1 billion Series D round. It was the largest round of the year in the AI category, according to 附近上门. But what’s more mind-blowing is that the company raised a total of $2.2 billion in just one year across three rounds. A picture is worth a thousand words, but a face is worth billions of dollars.
2. , another China-based startup focusing on robotics, raised an $820 million Series C. Just a cursory look at its website, however, makes UBTech appear to be a high-end toymaker rather than an AI innovator.
3. And biotech startup , which “manufactures microbes for Fortune 500 companies,” according to 附近上门, raised a $400 million Series C.

Now, this is the part I normally include a chart and 400 words of copy to contextualize the AI market. But if you read the above descriptions closely, you’ll see our problem: What the hell does 鈥淎I鈥� mean?

Take Zymergen as an example. 附近上门 tags it with the AI marker. Bloomberg, citing data from CB Insights, . But if you were making the decision, would you demarcate it as an AI company?

窜测尘别谤驳别苍鈥檚 doesn’t employ the phrase. Rather, it uses buzzwords commonly associated with AI鈥攎achine learning, automation. 窜测尘别谤驳别苍鈥檚 home page, technology page, and careers page are devoid of the term.

Instead, the company focuses on molecular technology. Artificial intelligence is not, in fact, what Zymergen is selling. We also know that Zymergen uses some AI-related tools to help it understand its datasets (check its jobs page for more). But is that enough to call it an AI startup? I don鈥檛 think so. I would call it biotech.

That brings us back to the data. In the spirit of transparency, CB Insights reports a 72 percent boost in 2018 AI investment over 2017 funding totals. 附近上门 data pegs 2018’s AI funding totals at a more modest 38 percent increase over the preceding year.

So we know that AI fundraising for private companies is growing. The two numbers make that plain. But it鈥檚 increasingly clear to me after nearly two years of staring at AI funding rounds that there’s no market consensus over exactly what counts as an AI startup. Bloomberg in its coverage of CB Insights鈥� report doesn鈥檛 offer a definition. What would yours be?1

If you don鈥檛 have one, don鈥檛 worry; you鈥檙e not alone. Professionals y debate what AI actually means, and who actually deserves the classification. There鈥檚 no taxonomy like how we classify animals, for startups. It鈥檚 flexible, and with PR, you can bend perception past reality.

I have a suspicion there are startups who overstate their proximity to AI. For instance, is employing Amazon鈥檚 services in your back end enough to call yourself an AI startup? I would say no. But after perusing 附近上门 data, you can see plenty of startups that classify themselves on such slippery grounds.

And the problem we鈥檙e encountering rhymes well with a broader definitional crisis: What exactly is a tech company? In the case of Blue Apron, public investors certainly differed with private investors over the definition, as Alex Wilhelm has touched on before.

So what I can tell you is that AI startup funding is up. By how much? A good amount. But the precise figure is hard to pin down until we all agree what counts as an AI startup.

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