Sapphire Ventures Plans to Invest in Corporate AI Startups

Venture capital firm Sapphire Ventures said it plans to invest more than $1 billion in artificial intelligence-related startups. Reuters reported that the $1 billion capital will come from Sapphire's existing funds, which have $10 billion under management and about $3 billion waiting to be deployed. The majority will be in the form of direct investment in artificial intelligence startups. Some will go to early-stage AI-focused startup funds through Sapphire's limited partner fund Sapphire Partners.

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Sapphire Ventures will offer investment support to corporate AI startups

Nino Marakovic, Sapphire's co-founder and CEO, says that Sapphire will primarily focus on business-to-business software companies that "make AI easily accessible" by "leveraging data to better predict outcomes". Furthermore, the firm will support AI and machine learning startups that also increase business revenues for specific sectors, such as manufacturing and healthcare.

As part of the $1 billion startup, Sapphire also plans to create an "AI Community" as part of the Sapphire Communities platform for portfolio company CEOs and executives. Marakovic said it will continue to implement AI in internal workflows and use AI tools in business functions "to help improve efficiency". It should be noted that its AI investments include Clari, DataRobot, Moveworks and ThoughtSpot. Austin, Texas-based Sapphire is not the only company to invest significant amounts of money in AI startups. Salesforce Ventures, the VC division of Salesforce, plans to pour $500 million into startups developing productive AI technologies.

Workday recently added $250 million to its existing VC fund, specifically to support AI and machine learning startups. OpenAI, the company behind chatbot ChatGPT, has raised a $175 million fund to invest in AI startups. Last month, Dropbox launched a $50 million AI-focused startup fund. And a few weeks ago, AWS said it aims to invest $100 million in a program to fund productive AI startups. Meanwhile, Accenture and PwC have also said they plan to invest $3 billion and $1 billion in AI, respectively.