Reuters: Giotto.ai Seeks $200M at $1B+ Valuation to Challenge OpenAI

Giotto.ai, a Swiss artificial intelligence laboratory based in Lausanne, is pursuing a funding round exceeding $200 million, targeting a valuation of over $1 billion. The company has partnered with Lazard investment bank to facilitate the capital raise, aiming to establish itself as a significant European player in the artificial general intelligence (AGI) sector. The prospective funding will be allocated to bolster AI research, develop commercial prototypes in collaboration with enterprise and government clients, and selectively open-source core technologies. Founded in 2017 by CEO Aldo Podesta, Giotto.ai previously divested its medical device compliance product to RQM+ in 2022 to concentrate on foundational research into advanced reasoning models. This funding initiative will gauge investor interest in a new European challenger to established Silicon Valley companies such as OpenAI and Anthropic. The effort coincides with increasing AI investment in Europe, reflecting the region's ambition to foster its own AI leadership. Mistral AI, based in Paris, recently secured 1.7 billion euros at a valuation exceeding $14 billion. Since its founding, Giotto.ai has raised CHF 15 million. The company emphasizes its research prowess by highlighting its leading position on the constrained Kaggle ARC-AGI-2 leaderboard, achieving a score of 25%.