Clarifai, a US-based deep learning technology producer backed by corporates Alphabet, Qualcomm and Nvidia, has hauled in $60m through a series C round led by venture capital firm New Enterprise Associates (NEA).
The round included Canada Pension Plan Investment Board’s CPP Investments vehicle, New York University’s NYU Innovation Venture Fund, Menlo Ventures, Union Square Ventures, LDV Capital, Lux Capital, Corazon Capital, NextEquity Partners, SineWave Ventures and Trousdale Capital.
Founded in 2013, Clarifai has developed artificial intelligence technology that recognises and extracts items from image and video content. It will use the funding to expand its sales, marketing and engineering teams.
The round boosted the company’s total funding to $100m and follows a $30m Menlo Ventures-led series B round in 2016 that included semiconductor producer Qualcomm’s corporate venturing unit, Qualcomm Ventures, as well as Union Square Ventures (USV), Osage University Partners (OUP), Lux Capital and unnamed others.
Qualcomm Ventures had joined internet and technology group Alphabet’s GV unit and Nvidia Ventures, a subsidiary of computer graphics card producer Nvidia, in a $10m series A round led by USV in 2015.
Corazon Capital, Lux Capital, New York University and OUP also contributed to the 2015 round, which was preceded by $1.25m in seed funding from GV, Qualcomm Ventures, Nvidia Ventures, New York University, Corazon Capital and LDV Capital the previous year.
