(Bloomberg) -- Writer, a startup aiming to compete with the likes of OpenAI to sell artificial intelligence products to businesses, has raised a new round of financing that nearly quadruples its valuation to $1.9 billion.
The company said Tuesday that it raised $200 million in a Series C funding round led by existing investor Iconiq Growth and new backers Premji Invest and Radical Ventures. Other participants in the deal included Insight Partners and Balderton Capital. Writer has raised a total of $326 million to date.
Writer is one of a growing number of AI startups looking to capitalize on demand for generative AI in the workplace. The company recently released a new AI model and helps companies automate tasks such as writing product descriptions, job listings and social media posts. It can also take on more complex tasks such as technical documentation.
The funding will be used to hire more engineering and sales talent, Writer Chief Executive Officer May Habib said in an interview Tuesday with Bloomberg TV. The goal is to build more advanced large language models, or LLMs, the technology that underpins AI chatbots.
“We are building our next generation of LLMs — models trained on data that is vision, text and action together,” Habib said. “Our vision is enterprises that are more intelligent, more creative and faster as a result of autonomous AI.”
As part of Tuesday’s announcement, Writer said it has signed up new corporate customers including Salesforce Inc., Uber Technologies Inc. and Qualcomm Inc.
Sandesh Patnam, managing partner at Premji Invest, and Radical Ventures partner Rob Toews will join Writer’s board of directors.
CNBC previously reported some details of the funding round.
(Updates with CEO quote in fifth paragraph.)
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