Mastering AI Implementation: 5 Foolproof Strategies for Business Success
Published on: March 10, 2024
Businesses are eagerly embracing generative AI, recognizing its potential as a key driver of productivity and innovation. However, a survey from EY highlights that the rapid progress in AI technology and a proliferation of vendors claiming AI expertise are complicating deployment efforts for many companies.
Despite these challenges, corporate spending on AI is not slowing down. According to an IDC forecast, global investments in AI-centric systems are expected to reach $154 billion by the end of the year. An MIT Tech Review survey also found that half of the firms surveyed plan to increase their data infrastructure and AI budgets by over 25% in the upcoming year.
Startups specializing in applied AI are particularly benefiting from this boom. One such company, AssemblyAI, has seen its customer base grow by 200% from the previous year, now serving 4,000 brands. The company's AI platform is handling around 25 million API calls per day, and over 200,000 developers are utilizing it to process more than 10 terabytes of data daily.
AssemblyAI’s co-founder and CEO, Dylan Fox, emphasizes the significance of AI in enterprise development. He notes that businesses leveraging their AI platform can focus on creating new products and workflows without being bogged down by model development and deployment, which can be complex and costly.
The success of AssemblyAI has attracted considerable interest from investors, leading to a significant funding round of $50 million led by Accel. This round of funding brings the total capital raised by the company to $115 million.
AssemblyAI, founded in 2017, specializes in AI models for speech-related tasks. Their API offers services like speech-to-text, speaker identification, content moderation, and speech summarization. Despite stiff competition from both startups and tech giants, AssemblyAI differentiates itself with models that are frequently updated, more accurate, and feature-rich.
Looking ahead, AssemblyAI plans to use part of the new funding to develop a universal speech model based on over a petabyte of voice data. The company is also expanding its team, aiming to grow its workforce significantly in the next year.
AssemblyAI’s vision is to become the 'Stripe for AI models,' offering state-of-the-art AI through a simple API. This approach aims to allow developers and product teams to focus on creating more specialized applications and workflows, leveraging AssemblyAI’s data and continually improving AI models.