An Intro to AI Startups for Complete Beginners

If you are in the tech industry, you will most likely have heard about AI Startups: you might even have one. For the sake of explanation, AI Startups are relatively young organizations that provide products and services in the field of artificial intelligence. They cover machine learning, data processing, natural language processing, the Internet of Things and even virtual assistants. AI Startups are known for revolutionising the use of artificial intelligence across multiple industries: generating funds for the work that they do is no easy feat.

The COVID 19 pandemic affected many industries, resulting in low productivity and income generation but these AI Startups resiliently created new services for remote workers, students and even sped up the development of important new drugs.

These startups are growing rapidly and attracting the attention of investors all over the globe, especially from the US and China. Some of these organizations have gained popularity in their own regions, but others need more exposure to the technology limelight. In today's article, I will be discussing AI Startups and telling you what you need to know as a techie with your own AI Startup.

The buzz around Artificial Intelligence-based organizations has not always been this loud: the term "AI" was first coined by Stanford's John McCarthy at Dartmouth college in 1955. After progress in the AI field reduced between the years 1974 to 1980, government funding dropped. However, in the 1980s the British government started funding AI technology again because of the fear of competition from the Japanese. 

The AI technology was embraced by organizations like IBM and Microsoft. IBM has been keen on artificial intelligence since the 1950s and other companies like Google, Facebook have joined the organization in its investment in AI startups over the years.

AI Startups are known for their innovative abilities: from building learning machine models that predict outcomes based on data, hiring talent for organizations, to getting domain expertise for enterprises. It is of little wonder that enterprises are predicted to get $3.9 trillion from AI business use cases by the year 2022.

The AI industry has moved from being an industry that attracted few investors to an industry everyone wants to invest in over the years. However, because of the perceived financial profits, there are so many AI startups and only a select few get appropriate funding.

In the midst of the rush for funding amongst the many AI startups all over the globe, there are some AI Startups that have moved to the front of the technology line and gotten funding from investors.

Sense Time, a facial recognition technology based artificial intelligence platform received a whopping $2.6 billion from investors. The organization's software has an error rate of 1/100,000 and that drew the attention of it's investors.

UB Tech Robotics is known for making human-like robots designed for entertainment, education, commercial and retail purposes. They also have an interactive robot building system that helps children build robots. UB Tech Robotics has been able to raise $942.8 million for their business and retail across China, the Us and Europe.

Horizon Robotics, a startup known for creating software to be implemented in self-driving cars has raised $1.6 billion towards their project. The goal is to equip more than 1000 different vehicles with embedded AI: this will improve the perception and motor skills of the vehicles. 

There are other notable mentions like Zymergen, 9F Group, Yitu Technology, etc. There are reports that for the third quarter of 2021, the AI startup investment industry recorded a high of $17.9 billion. This shows that the AI industry is a multi-billion dollar industry and there are a lot of opportunities for your AI startup to get funding.

Getting funding for your AI startup may seem tough, but it is an achievable feat. It is important to note that you need to sell your startup, not just as an AI startup but a profitable business.

The difference between AI startups and other startups is that for AI startups, you need to collect a lot of data and experiment possible outcomes with the software that may not be guaranteed.

This is where your sales and marketing skillset comes in: you need a proper business plan and a pitch to present to the venture capitalists. They may not necessarily understand technical terminology, so it is your job to explain to them in clear terms how investing in your startup will be a profitable investment.

It is also important to build and maintain friendships with old clients, work colleagues and people in the venture capital industry. You can build connections on social media and by attending physical events. When you put yourself out there and sell your brand well, investors will come find you and put their money in your AI Startup.

AI Startups are advancing in their contributions to many industries especially the finance, healthcare, automobile and education industries. In spite of their efforts, because of the many available startups funding from investors is limited. 

AI Startups have a unique quality of resilience: they can handle whatever lemons the tech industry throws them and make bottles of lemonade. The predictions say that in 2025, the AI market will be up to $90 billion. In years to come, I see the current AI startups standing strong as big names in the tech industry and doing wonders with artificial intelligence in multiple industries.