Visa, a company that lets people pay with credit cards, has announced a new $100 million programme to invest in the next generation of companies working on generative AI technologies and apps that will change the future of business and payments.
Visa said that the effort is an extension of the company’s leadership in using AI to drive payment innovation, create value for partners and clients, and allow and empower global commerce.
Visa Ventures, which is Visa’s global corporate investment arm, will be responsible for the project. Visa says that since 2007, it has invested in and worked with companies, making payments and commerce more innovative.
Generative AI, like the popular OpenAI’s ChatGPT, is an emerging branch of AI built on big Language Models (LLMs) to create artificial general intelligence that can create text, images, and other content from enormous sets of existing data when given instructions.
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AI in business
In a statement released by the company, Jack Forestell, Chief Product and Strategy Officer at Visa Inc., said:
“Generative AI has mostly focused on tasks and content creation, but it will soon change how we live, work, and do business in ways we need to understand.”
Visa Ventures Head David Rolf said, “Generative AI has the potential to be one of the most transformative technologies of our time, so we are excited to invest in some of the most innovative and disruptive venture-backed startups building in generative AI, commerce, and payments.”
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Tech titans are prioritizing AI
Visa’s news was the latest by a tech giant worldwide to say it was investing in AI. Amazon said about a week ago that it would put up to $4 billion into the AI company Anthropic.
The e-commerce group said it will put $1.25 billion into Anthropic at first for a minority share. Anthropic, like Google’s Bard and Microsoft-backed OpenAI, runs an AI-powered chatbot that reads text and responds to questions. As part of the deal, Amazon said it can put $4 billion into Anthropic.
Microsoft expanded its collaboration with OpenAI, the company behind the ground-breaking ChatGPT tool, earlier this year. With the partnership came a promise to put much money into the AI business.
Microsoft had invested over $3 billion in OpenAI, and the partnership extension showed how important its technology is to Microsoft’s future and its fight with Google, Meta, and Apple.