Salesforce Ventures, the company’s global investment arm, has launched a new $250 million generative AI fund to bolster the startup ecosystem and spark the development of responsible generative AI.

Why this matters: More than two-thirds of leaders will be prioritizing generative AI over the next 18 months, but technical and ethical concerns with the technology remain a top concern.

The details: Announced at TrailblazerDX, the fund will initially invest in four companies, including Anthropic, Cohere, Hearth.AI, and You.com.

  • Each has demonstrated an ability to meaningfully transform application software and impact end users’ workflows using responsible and trusted development processes.

Soundbites:

  • “Salesforce Ventures has been investing in high-potential enterprise technology businesses for more than a decade, and these initial investments from the fund in generative AI companies fit squarely into that strategy,” said John Somorjai, EVP Corporate Development and Salesforce Ventures at Salesforce.
  • “We’re excited to partner with Salesforce to bring our trustworthy, conversational AI assistant Claude to more businesses in a responsible and ethical way. Anthropic and Salesforce share a vision for creating innovative technology that is rooted in safety, and we’re looking forward to introducing more useful AI services into the world,” said Daniela Amodei, President, Anthropic.
  • “Cohere is committed to empowering all businesses to build incredible products with world-leading language AI. We continue to pave the way for the broad adoption of natural language processing technology, providing every developer and enterprise with the ability to explore, generate, and search in a more natural way than ever before. We are excited to partner with Salesforce on innovative new applications to bring this technology to their enterprise customers,” said Aidan Gomez, Co-Founder & CEO, Cohere.
  • “Hearth AI is building a new category of next-gen products centered on agentic relationship management. We can’t be more excited to partner with Salesforce — the CRM category giant — to build a world where AI helps us understand and act on our networks, creating more matched opportunities and connection,” said Ashe Magalhaes, Founder, Hearth AI.
  • “We’re excited to partner with Salesforce Ventures in this new era of responsible generative AI. With our suite of generative AI apps and products, business users can accomplish more – find people across social media, summarize complex topics, and code in different programming languages, create novel copy-right free images, and write blogs and marketing copy with AI. We invite you to join forces with You.com as we continue to pave the way for the future of do-engines and enhanced productivity,” said Richard Socher, Founder and CEO, You.com.