Highlights:

  • Nomic, established in New York last year, has already introduced two products, GPT4ALL, an open-source large language model resembling ChatGPT.
  • Nomic estimates that over 50,000 developers utilize its open-source AI models, and the company has established partnerships with MongoDB Inc. and Replit Inc.

Recently, Nomic AI, a startup focused on artificial intelligence, announced the successful closure of an early-stage funding round, securing USD 17 million in funding.

Led by Coatue, Nomic’s Series A investment, valuing the company at approximately USD 100 million, attracted participation from Contrary Capital, SV Angel, Factorial Capital, Betaworks Ventures, Story Ventures, and numerous angel investors.

Founded in New York last year, Nomic has already launched two products, including GPT4ALL, an open-source large language model akin to ChatGPT. Available as a free download for universal usage, GPT4ALL can operate on compact devices like laptops. Nomic’s second offering, Atlas, facilitates the visualization of unstructured datasets, enabling their utilization in constructing other large language models (LLMs).

In a blog post, Nomic elucidated its open-source approach, highlighting the concentration of current large language model (LLM) technology in the hands of a limited number of companies with disproportionate access to computing resources. Nomic asserts the need for more transparency regarding the inner workings of AI models employed by these companies, raising concerns about the potential concentration of generative AI power in a select few entities.

To ensure widespread benefits from generative AI, Nomic endeavors to establish a “vibrant, collaborative and open-source ecosystem.” According to the startup, the open availability of code, datasets, documentation, and model weights is vital for the auditability and explainability of AI models.

Nomic’s models offer developers an alternative to proprietary models like OpenAI LP’s GPT-4 and Google LLC’s Bard, eliminating the need for subscription payments to access them.

Nomic AI Co-founder Andriy Mulyar told Reuters, “We want to allow people to have access to the most powerful models that are specialized for the use cases they care about, and to build those systems themselves. They need to be able to understand what data goes into those systems.”

Nomic estimates that over 50,000 developers utilize its open-source AI models, and the company has established partnerships with MongoDB Inc. and Replit Inc. Nomic recently revealed a strategic collaboration with Hugging Face Inc., the creator of the widely-used Hugging Face Hub, housing over 100,000 open-source machine learning models. This partnership aims to facilitate the joint development and distribution of immersive and interactive data visualizations by Nomic and Hugging Face.

With new funding, Nomic is actively recruiting for various positions across its team. Additionally, the company aims to enhance its existing product suite.