AI21 labs

AI21 Labs, founded in 2017 by Amnon Shashua, Yoav Shoham, and Ori Goshen, specialises in building AI systems and Foundation Models for enterprise use. The company's mission is to bridge the gap between cutting-edge research and practical, enterprise-ready AI solutions. AI21's models focus on enhancing communication, decision-making, and innovation for businesses.

AI21's first consumer product, Wordtune, is an AI-powered writing assistant used by over 10 million people globally. This product tested the potential of their language models, leading to the development of enterprise-level models. Their flagship model family, Jamba, offers production-grade, state-of-the-art language models with a hybrid Mamba-Transformer architecture. Jamba models are designed to handle long context windows of up to 256k tokens, which allows for efficient processing of large datasets. The models are built to be flexible, scalable, and optimised for speed.

The company provides various deployment options, including SaaS, APIs, private VPC, and on-premise, to suit different enterprise needs. AI21's RAG Engine (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) is a core feature that supports conversational AI systems by grounding them in enterprise data. Security and compliance are integrated into their solutions to ensure data privacy.

AI21 has raised significant funding, including $155 million in a Series C round, with investors such as Google and Nvidia. The company’s enterprise clients include sectors like fintech and research, and it has partnerships with leading cloud platforms.

AI21’s tools enable enterprises to integrate generative AI models into their workflows, offering solutions for customer service, content generation, and more. With continuous improvements and hands-on support, AI21 empowers businesses to deploy AI confidently and securely, making it a leading player in AI for enterprises.

AI21 Labs was founded in November 2017 in Tel Aviv, Israel, by Amnon Shashua, Yoav Shoham, and Ori Goshen. The company focuses on developing advanced AI systems and language models, particularly in the field of Natural Language Processing (NLP). Its goal is to build AI systems that can become useful thought partners for humans in enterprises, bridging the gap between research and real-world applications.

In January 2019, AI21 Labs raised $9.5 million in a seed funding round to support its development efforts. The company launched its first product, Wordtune, in October 2020. Wordtune is an AI-based writing assistant that helps users paraphrase and rewrite content by understanding the context of the text. The product quickly gained popularity, reaching over 10 million users globally. In 2021, Google named Wordtune one of its favourite Chrome extensions.

In August 2021, AI21 Labs launched AI21 Studio, a platform that provides APIs and tools for developers to build applications using AI21's language models. During the same period, they introduced Jurassic-1, their first large-scale language model with over 250,000 tokens, marking a significant achievement in the NLP domain.

In November 2021, AI21 raised $20 million in funding from Walden Catalyst, followed by a $25 million Series A round later that month, led by Pitango First. The company's progress continued with a $64 million Series B funding round in July 2022, led by Ahren, along with other investors like Walden Catalyst and TPY Capital.

In March 2023, AI21 Labs launched Jurassic-2, which included improvements such as faster response times and support for multiple languages. In August 2023, the company closed a $155 million Series C funding round, with new investors including Google and Nvidia.

In March 2024, AI21 released Jamba, an open-weights large language model based on the hybrid Mamba-SSM Transformer architecture. This model provides a 256k token context window, optimised for enterprise-level tasks.

As of 2024, AI21 Labs is a prominent player in AI development, providing cutting-edge AI tools and systems for enterprises. Their focus on developing NLP solutions and foundation models has led to significant partnerships with major companies and ongoing advancements in the AI field.

AI21 Labs' mission is to bridge the gap between advanced AI research and real-world applications for enterprises. The company aims to create AI systems that empower businesses to communicate effectively, make informed decisions, and innovate efficiently. By building state-of-the-art language models and tools, AI21 Labs enables organisations to design custom generative AI applications tailored to their needs. Their focus is on developing reliable, scalable, and secure AI systems that can be easily integrated into enterprise workflows, helping companies unlock the potential of AI for improved productivity and performance.

AI21 Labs' vision is to transform how businesses use artificial intelligence by making advanced AI systems accessible, practical, and impactful. They aim to lead the development of AI models that enhance human abilities, helping organisations to solve complex problems, communicate clearly, and innovate without limits. By continuously advancing their AI technology and focusing on real-world applications, AI21 Labs envisions a future where businesses of all sizes can harness the power of AI to improve efficiency, decision-making, and overall performance while maintaining security and scalability in every solution they offer.

AI21 Labs has earned several awards and recognition for its innovative work in artificial intelligence and natural language processing. Wordtune, their AI writing assistant, was named one of Google’s favourite Chrome extensions in 2021, reflecting its impact on users worldwide. In addition, AI21 Labs has been recognised for its Jurassic-1 and Jurassic-2 language models, which set new standards for large-scale AI model performance. Their continued advancements in AI technology, including partnerships with major companies like Google and Nvidia, further highlight AI21 Labs' influence in the AI industry and its role as a leader in AI innovation.

AI21 Labs specialises in developing advanced AI products and services, particularly focused on Natural Language Processing (NLP) and enterprise solutions. Their offerings cater to both individuals and businesses, helping them leverage artificial intelligence for improved communication, efficiency, and innovation. Below is a detailed overview of AI21 Labs’ key products and services.

• Wordtune: AI21 Labs’ first consumer product, Wordtune, was launched in October 2020. Wordtune is an AI-based writing assistant designed to help users improve their writing by offering suggestions for paraphrasing, rephrasing, and rewriting text. The tool understands the context of sentences and provides options to express the same message in different ways. With over 10 million users worldwide, Wordtune helps individuals, students, and professionals enhance their writing skills, making it clearer and more compelling. The tool is available as a browser extension and integrates seamlessly with various writing platforms.
• AI21 Studio: AI21 Studio is a platform launched in 2021, providing developers and enterprises with access to AI21 Labs' powerful language models through APIs. This platform enables users to integrate AI-driven language processing into their applications, websites, and services. AI21 Studio supports a wide range of tasks, including text summarisation, topic classification, ideation, and even code generation. Businesses can easily query the models to generate insights, summarise large documents, and automate content creation. AI21 Studio plays a crucial role in helping companies adopt AI solutions tailored to their specific needs.
• Jurassic-1 and Jurassic-2: The Jurassic series of language models is one of AI21 Labs' most significant achievements in the NLP space. Jurassic-1, launched in August 2021, is a large-scale language model with over 250,000 tokens, making it capable of understanding and generating human-like text across various use cases. Following this, in March 2023, AI21 Labs introduced Jurassic-2, an improved version with faster response times, better language understanding, and support for multiple languages. These models allow businesses to automate a wide range of tasks such as content creation, data analysis, and customer service.
• Jamba: In March 2024, AI21 Labs released Jamba, a state-of-the-art language model built on a novel Mamba-SSM Transformer architecture. Jamba is designed for enterprise use, offering a long context window of up to 256k tokens, which allows it to process and analyse large datasets efficiently. This model is optimised for both speed and accuracy, making it suitable for various business applications, such as legal document analysis, research, and large-scale content generation. Jamba’s hybrid architecture allows businesses to deploy it across multiple environments, including cloud-based SaaS, private VPC, or on-premise infrastructure.
• RAG Engine (Retrieval-Augmented Generation): AI21 Labs also offers the RAG Engine, a system that combines the power of retrieval-augmented generation with their foundation models. The RAG Engine allows businesses to integrate conversational AI systems that are grounded in their organisational data. This makes it ideal for enterprises that require AI-driven customer service solutions, where responses are tailored based on specific business data. It eliminates the need for custom prompt engineering or fine-tuning, providing out-of-the-box value.
• Deployment Options and Security: AI21 Labs provides flexible deployment options to meet the specific needs of enterprises. Clients can choose from Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) on the AI21 Platform, private VPC (Virtual Private Cloud), or on-premise deployment. These options ensure that businesses can implement AI solutions securely and according to their specific data and compliance requirements. AI21 Labs also prioritises security and data privacy, ensuring that all deployments meet enterprise-grade security standards.
• Custom Solutions: AI21 Labs offers custom AI solutions for businesses with unique requirements. Their dedicated integration team works closely with enterprises to scope out high-value AI workflows, providing hands-on deployment assistance and ensuring that the AI systems deliver maximum business impact. This includes custom pre-training, fine-tuning, and ongoing support to optimise AI performance for specific business needs.

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