SAP Puts Its Money Where Its Mouth Is, Invests In Generative AI Startups

Funding has been hard to come by in 2023, but startups in the generative artificial intelligence (AI) space seem to be exempt from this rule.

Most recently, SAP — one of the world's largest consulting and software companies in the world — invested big money in three top generative AI companies: Aleph Alpha GmbH, Anthropic PBC and Cohere.

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SAP all-in on the future of AI

SAP's recent financial commitments to Aleph Alpha GmbH, Anthropic PBC and Cohere underscore its commitment to an open ecosystem approach in AI, aiming to incorporate the best available technology across all SAP offerings. The investments expand upon a collection of AI collaborations and corporate applications disclosed in May. 

They also supplement a pledge made last week by Sapphire Ventures to invest over $1 dollars in startups specializing in AI-driven corporate technology.

"We are at a watershed moment, with generative AI poised to fundamentally change how businesses run," SAP Chief Strategy Officer Sebastian Steinhaeuser said. "SAP is committed to creating an enterprise AI ecosystem for the future that complements our world-class business applications suite and helps our customers unlock their full potential."

SAP is committed to providing Business AI that is pertinent, dependable and ethical. This significance is evidenced by its integration into the entire SAP product suite. The deployment of SAP Business AI has reached more than 26,000 clients using SAP's cloud solutions across a variety of use cases and partner solutions. SAP Business AI's relevance is underscored by its immediate availability and integration into essential business operations powered by SAP software. Its reliability is anchored in its development over decades, using a wealth of business data and appropriate business content. 

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The commitment to delivering it responsibly is maintained through rigorous standards for security, privacy, compliance and ethics. It is this AI foundation, powered by the SAP Business Technology Platform, that allows the company to innovate and provide Business AI, supported by SAP's investment in AI and an open network of AI collaborators.

These SAP-Backed AI Startups Are Onto Something Big

In the world of generative AI startups, the three companies that SAP invested in are positioned to do big things.

Aleph Alpha GmbH, located in Germany, is renowned for creating a sovereign, full-stack, generative AI solution aimed at addressing complex and critical enterprise needs. The company stands out as the pioneer in providing next-generation, multimodal large language models, boasting top-tier results from models trained uniformly across multiple European languages. Aleph Alpha values interoperability, data security and privacy and offers flexible AI services, including multicloud and on-premise installations, while actively participating in SAP's PartnerEdge program under the "Build" track.

Anthropic PBC, based in San Francisco, is dedicated to AI safety and research, developing AI systems that are beneficial, trustworthy and nonharmful. The company's AI assistant Claude adheres to a "constitutional" approach, interacting with users based on Anthropic's principles centered on reliability and safety and assisting users in various tasks, from generating answers to processing text within a natural conversation context. In its quest to ensure technology like Claude is beneficial to society, Anthropic places a strong focus on safety and reliability.

Headquartered in San Francisco and Toronto with a key research center in London, Cohere is a leading enterprise AI company. The company develops top-tier technology tailored to business needs, emphasizing user-friendliness, accessibility, security and data privacy. Cohere's innovative technology paves the way for a more intuitive approach to generating, searching and summarizing information. The company's cloud-agnostic platform offers flexibility in choosing cloud providers, accessibility via an application programming interface (API) as a managed service and can be deployed on virtual private clouds or on-site to accommodate companies' data locations.

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