Artificial Intelligence startup AI21 Labs, which specialised in AI that can fundamentally change the way we can read and write, has announced today the completion of its $64 million series B funding round. The round was led by Ahren with participation from existing investors, including Prof. Amnon Shashua, Walden Catalyst, Pitango, TPY Capital and Mark Leslie.

The latest round brings the firm’s total fundraising to $118 million and brings the company's valuation to $664 million. The funding will be used to invest in R&D and recruit new marketing and sales employees. 

Alice Newcombe-Ellis, Founding and General Partner of Ahren said, “NLP has reached a critical inflection point and AI21 has developed unique infrastructure and products to successfully serve a large and rapidly growing market. We consider this team to be of the highest caliber, both technically and commercially, leading a differentiated company in a transformative space".

AI21 Labs, which was founded in 2017, specialises in AI-powered language services by developing Natural Language Processing (NLP). It has built AI21 Studio, an NLP-as-a-Service developer platform where developers can purchase state-of-the-art pre-trained and custom language models to build text-based applications. Its clients include companies like Publicis and Latitude. 

The company has launched several products, including Word Tune, a browser extension with millions of active users that was chosen by Google as one of its favourite extensions for 2021, as well as Wordtune Read, which analyses and summarises documents in seconds, enabling users to read long and complex text quickly and efficiently.

Ori Goshen, co-founder and co-CEO said, “We completed this round during a period of market uncertainty, which highlights the confidence our investors have in AI21's vision to change the way people consume and produce information," said. "The funding will allow us to accelerate the company's global growth, while continuing to develop advanced technology in the field of natural language processing. We are looking forward to growing our team and our offerings."