Generative AI is buzzing with innovation, and startups like Together are at the forefront, securing a noteworthy $102.5 million in Series A funding led by Kleiner Perkins, with support from notable players like Nvidia and Emergence Capital. This infusion of capital is poised to elevate Together's cloud platform, dedicated to training generative AI models, to new heights. About Together: Established in June 2022 by Vipul Ved Prakash, Ce Zhang, Chris Re, and Percy Liang, Together is on a mission to advance open source generative AI and AI model development infrastructure. The team envisions a future where businesses can shape generative AI strategies without being tied to specific vendors. Together's cloud platform empowers developers to work on both open and custom AI models, providing scalable compute at competitive prices compared to industry giants such as Google Cloud, AWS, and Azure. Expanding the Cloud Platform: The recent funding, exceeding five times the size of the previous round, will be allocated to expanding Together's cloud platform. This platform enables developers to efficiently create and fine-tune AI models, offering the additional advantage of cost-effectiveness. By optimizing down the stack and utilizing thousands of GPUs across secure facilities, Together achieves significant reductions in operating costs. Pika Labs Collaboration: Pika Labs, another player in the generative AI landscape, recently raised $55 million and joined forces with Together. Leveraging Together's GPU clusters, they developed a text-to-video model, highlighting the economic benefits of custom infrastructure creation. Together's platform allows developers to seamlessly integrate open source models or create their own, ensuring industry-leading performance and reliability. Custom Models and Open Source AI Research: In addition to its cloud service, Together provides Custom Models, a consulting service enabling customers to bring their own data to the platform. The company is deeply invested in open source AI research, contributing to projects like RedPajama, GPT-JT, and OpenChatKit. This commitment underscores Together's dedication to fostering innovation in the generative AI space. About the Funding: The substantial $102.5 million funding underscores the growing interest in generative AI, with IDC predicting a surge in generative AI investments from $16 billion in 2023 to an astounding $143 billion by 2027. Together's success contributes to the trend, with generative AI firms securing approximately 40% of all startup rounds, totaling $11.9 billion in the first half of 2023.