France-backed Current AI raises $400M for open infrastructure
- Source
- TechCrunch
- Time
- 11:55 PM
- Weight
- 95/100
The nonprofit organization Current AI has secured $400 million in funding to develop open-source, public AI infrastructure designed to serve as a "World Wide Web of AI." Backed by a $100 million seed investment from the French government, the initiative also draws support from philanthropic organizations like the Ford Foundation and the MacArthur Foundation, alongside tech companies such as Salesforce and DeepMind. Led by former Mozilla AI strategist Ayah Bdeir, the project aims to provide a public-interest alternative to the proprietary models controlled by Silicon Valley corporations.
The organization’s primary focus is bridging the digital divide for languages and cultures currently ignored by major AI systems. Current AI has already launched Suno Sutra, an offline device supporting 22 Indian languages, and recently debuted Alpha Chat, an open-source chatbot built in collaboration with partners like Hugging Face and MIT.