Arcee AI Raises $150M Series B, Valued at Over $1 Billion for Open-Weight AI Models
Arcee AI built its Trinity family of open-weight AI models for approximately $20 million. The company has now secured a Series B funding round valuing it at over $1 billion, led by Vista Equity Partners, Cambium Capital, and Emergence Capital. A source tells Fortune the round raised at least $150 million.
"Organizations should not have to choose between the capabilities of a frontier model and the ability to control the technology at the center of their work," stated Mark McQuade, co-founder and CEO of Arcee AI.
Key Points:
- Valuation: Arcee AI's latest valuation surpasses $1 billion.
- Investment: The Series B round was led by Vista Equity Partners, Cambium Capital, and Emergence Capital, with participation from AI10 Ventures, Hitachi, IAG, Microsoft’s M12, P7, and Wipro.
- Cost to Build: Arcee built its Trinity models for approximately $20 million in salaries, compute, data, infrastructure, and operations.
- Goal: Catch up with Chinese open-weight AI models, specifically GLM Flash from Beijing-based Z.ai.
Arcee's Plans:
The funding will be allocated to:
- Training the next generation of Trinity models.
- Expanding its collaboration with US Department of Energy national laboratories on Genesis-Science-1, an open model for scientific computing.
- Building products to help organizations customize, test, deploy, and run open models.
- Collaborating extensively with Vista’s portfolio companies.
Context:
This funding round follows similar investments in open-weight AI, including River AI raising $1.1 billion and the White House's technology strategy removing open-weight AI from its critical list.