French startup Mistral AI raises $640 million in a funding round, valuing the company at nearly $6 billion. Mistral intends to use the fresh capital to expand its resources for developing open source AI models and to keep pace with OpenAI and Anthropic in the global competition.
AI-powered search tool Perplexity closed a new round of funding and is valued at more than $1 billion. With the new capital and a new Enterprise Pro Plan, the company plans to expand globally and offer its secure, AI-powered search service to enterprises.
Poe introduces a new revenue model where AI bot creators on the platform can set a price per message to earn money when users interact with their bots. Source: TechCrunch
Google.org launches a $20 million grant program for nonprofit organizations developing generative AI technologies. The six-month program includes financial support, technical training, workshops, and mentoring to help participants implement their AI projects, which range from translation services for refugees to optimizing social benefit applications.
Google is paying publishers to use a new AI offering. According to Google, it is primarily intended to help journalists at smaller media outlets with their work, AdWeek reports.