Generative AI startups get 40% of all VC investment in cloud amid ChatGPT buzz
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Generative artificial intelligence startups are getting 40% of all the venture capital funding that flows into cloud companies, according to venture investors Accel.
In its latest annual Euroscape report, which looks at key cloud and AI trends, Accel said that venture funding for cloud startups based in the U.S., Europe and Israel is projected to rise to $79.2 billion this year, with artificial intelligence fueling much of the recovery.
Venture funding into the cloud industry climbed 27% annually — marking the first year of growth in three years. Cloud startups raised $62.5 billion in Europe, Israel and the U.S. in 2023, the report found.
Funding is up 65% from the $47.9 billion cloud firms raised four years ago, according to Accel.
It comes after OpenAI, the Microsoft-backed company behind the buzzy generative AI chatbot ChatGPT, earlier this month raised $6.6 billion in a mammoth funding round that valued the startup at $157 billion.
AI is eating software
Much of the growth of funding in cloud is being driven by excitement around AI.
“AI is sucking the air out of the room” when it comes to cloud, Philippe Botteri, partner at Accel, told CNBC in an interview this week. “This is both visible on the public market and and the private market.”
As of Sep. 30, the Euroscape index — a selection of publicly-listed U.S., European and Israeli cloud firms curated by Accel — is up 19% year-over-year.
This pales in comparison with the 38% increase the Nasdaq saw this year and is also down 39% from the Euroscape index’s peak hit back in 2021.
The cloud industry has been having a tough time beyond AI, with enterprise software budgets squeezed by macroeconomic and geopolitical risks.
“There’s a lot of uncertainty out there,” Botteri said, adding that businesses are increasingly asking questions around geopolitical tensions and macroeconomic factors, which have affected software spending priorities.
Not a single company in Accel’s Euroscape index has seen revenue growth of more than 40% per year this year, compared with 23 businesses achieving the feat in 2021.
“IT budgets are shifting towards AI,” Botteri noted. “They are still growing slightly, but they are growing a few percent year-over-year.”
“Part of it is budgets going toward genAI, building new applications, testing these new technologies, so there is less for the rest,” the VC investor added.
Foundational models in focus
The top six generative AI companies in the U.S., Europe and Israel, respectively, accounted for roughly two thirds of the funding raised by all genAI startups, according to Accel’s Euroscape report.
OpenAI raised a dominant $18.9 billion in 2023-24, taking the lion’s share of VC funding that went to U.S. genAI companies.
“When you look OpenAI and the speed at which the road to over $3 billion in revenues, this has been one of the fastest companies in software of all time,” said Botteri.
Anthropic raised the second-largest sum among U.S. genAI startups, with $7.8 billion, while Elon Musk’s xAI came in third.
In Europe, the biggest funding amounts went to Britain’s Wayve, France’s Mistral and Germany’s Aleph Alpha.
Globally, companies building so-called foundational models, which power much of today’s generative AI tools, account for two thirds of overall funding for generative AI firms, Accel said.
Big Tech’s AI splurge
The U.S. took the lead globally in terms of overall regional generative AI investment raised.
Out of the $56 billion total siphoned into genAI firms globally over 2023-24, roughly 80% of the cash went to U.S.-based firms, Accel said, also noting that Amazon, Microsoft, Google and Meta are each investing an eye-watering average $30 billion to $60 billion in AI per year.
AI “majors” like OpenAI, Anthropic and xAI are spending billions on the technology, Accel said, while smaller challengers including Cohere, H and Mistral are investing tens to hundreds of millions per year.
Dev Ittycheria, CEO of database firm MongoDB, noted that it’s likely concentration of the most powerful AI models will consolidate to only a select few players that are able to attract the necessary capital to make investments in data centers and chips to train and run their systems.
“Access to capital will profoundly impact the performance of these models,” Ittycheria said in an interview Tuesday on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.” He added: “My bet is that over time, you won’t have this many model providers, you may come down to one or two.”
An icon of ASML is displayed on a smartphone, with an ASML chip visible in the background.
Nurphoto | Nurphoto | Getty Images
Shares in semiconductor equipment maker ASML fell 15.6% on Tuesday after the Dutch company published disappointing sales forecasts in results a day early.
The move pulled other chip stocks lower, with Nvidia, Advanced Micro Devices and Broadcom all falling at least 4% after the news.
ASML said it expects net sales for 2025 to come in between 30 billion euros and 35 billion euros ($32.7 billion and $38.1 billion), at the lower half of the range it had previously provided.
Net bookings for the September quarter were 2.6 billion euros ($2.83 billion), the company said — well below the 5.6 billion euro LSEG consensus estimate. Net sales, however, beat expectations coming in at 7.5 billion euros.
“While there continue to be strong developments and upside potential in AI, other market segments are taking longer to recover. It now appears the recovery is more gradual than previously expected,” company CEO Christophe Fouquet said in the earnings release.
AMSL
ASML said that the early publication of its results was due to a technical error which saw it erroneously publish the report on a part of its website.
In the lead-up to the earnings, Wall Street analysts had turned more cautious on the chip firm, which is a critical supplier to the broader semiconductor industry.
China concerns
The firm is facing a tougher business outlook in China due to U.S. and Dutch export restrictions on shipments to the country.
Last month, the U.S. government rolled out new export controls on critical technologies to China, including advanced chipmaking tools. Separately, the Dutch government announced plans to take over control of exports of ASML‘s machines to the country.
ASML’s extreme ultraviolet lithography machines are used by many of the world’s largest chipmakers — from Nvidia to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. — to produce advanced chips.
The company’s chief financial officer, Roger Dassen, said Tuesday that he expects the firm’s China business to show a “more normalized percentage in our order book and also in our business.”
“We do see China trending towards more historically normal percentages in our business,” Dassen said, according to a transcript of a video, also released a day early.
“So we expect China to come in at around 20% of our total revenue for next year. Which would also be in line with its representation in our backlog.”
In its June-quarter earnings presentation, the Dutch company said that 49% of its sales come from China.
‘Clearly disappointing’
In a note released following ASML’s results Tuesday, analysts at Bernstein said the firm’s weaker-than-expected order book and a disappointing 2025 outlook were “likely to overshadow decent Q3 results.”
The analysts added that ASML’s lowered guidance indicates that “the delayed cyclical recovery and specific customer challenges are weighing heavily” on 2025 expectations.
Analysts at Cantor, meanwhile, said the downbeat outlook for ASML was “clearly disappointing” and will weigh on semiconductor stocks. However, they added that, “in no way shape or form does the company’s updated outlook indicate any change in the AI growth story.”
Technology
Amazon is using tech from a Khosla Ventures-backed startup to run robot warehouses at Whole Foods
Customers shop for produce at a Whole Foods Market 365 location in Santa Monica, California.
Patrick T. Fallon | Bloomberg | Getty Images
As Amazon looks to add more automation into its supermarkets, the retailing giant is partnering with a Khosla Ventures-backed startup that just came out of stealth last year, CNBC has learned.
Last week, Amazon announced it’s piloting a new concept at one of its Whole Foods locations in a Philadelphia suburb, where a micro-fulfillment center will be bolted onto the store and allow shoppers to purchase staples not typically stocked by the organic grocer.
The facility relies on warehouse automation technology from Fulfil, a San Francisco-based startup that develops robotic systems for grocers and other retailers, according to a person familiar with the matter and other corroborating information. The person asked not to be named because the plan is confidential.
At a recent press event held near an Amazon warehouse in Nashville, Anand Varadarajan, who leads the product and technology teams for Amazon’s worldwide grocery business, showed a video demonstrating the use of Fulfil’s technology. In the video, robots can be seen pulling trays of soy sauce, canned pineapple and coffee pods from shelves, then handing them off to other robots equipped with grocery bags.
The video makes no mention of Fulfil’s technology, but the system appears identical to the contents of a demo video on Fulfil’s website.
Amazon declined to comment on whether it’s using Fulfil’s technology. The company said it invests in a variety of technologies and robotics, including those developed in-house and from third-party partners, to improve its operations networks. Fulfil CEO Mir Aamir declined to comment.
The Information reported earlier on Amazon testing Fulfil’s technology.
Fulfil emerged from stealth in February 2023, announcing at the tie time that it raised $60 million in a round led by Eclipse Ventures, with participation from Khosla Ventures and DCVC. Prior to working with Amazon, the company was testing its technology with California-based retailer Lucky, which is owned by regional grocer Save Mart, and is also an Amazon grocery delivery partner.
Recent job postings on Fulfil’s website indicate the company is hiring engineers and factory operators in Plymouth Meeting, Pennsylvania, the site of the Whole Foods store where Amazon is piloting its technology. Amazon expects the facility to be operational within the next year, Tony Hoggett, who leads Amazon’s worldwide grocery business, said in a blog post last week.
Fulfil’s technology will enable shoppers to purchase staples from brands that aren’t stocked at Whole Foods, which has long maintained a “No List” of hundreds of ingredients that are banned from all the food it sells. It’s meant that shoppers looking for items like Coca Cola and cereals from Kellogg’s can’t find them on shelves at Whole Foods, which Amazon acquired in 2017 for $13.7 billion.
The system being piloted in Plymouth Meeting will let shoppers order items from Amazon’s website and its online grocery service, Amazon Fresh, while browsing Whole Foods. They can pick up items purchased online in the store as they’re checking out.
A small automated warehouse would be bolted onto a Whole Foods store, where robots fetch and ferry items like socks, soda bottles or tennis rackets and place them into bags for pickup.
Hoggett wrote in the blog post that Amazon is looking to “eliminate those extra trips” shoppers take to other grocery stores. The average American shops at two different grocery stores per week, whether to maximize their cost savings, shop from a broader range of products, or take advantage of different promotions, according to an April study from market research firm Drive Research.
Sales growth in Amazon’s physical stores unit, which includes Whole Foods and Fresh, has been mired in the single digits for the past seven quarters.
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