Investments in Generative AI are fueling a surge in tech and SF is beginning to benefit
Artificial Intelligence has become the latest darling in the tech world (oh Crypto, we hardly knew ye). With it has come a massive upsurge in investment. Investors announced $10.7 Billion in funding for generative AI in the first quarter of 2023, a thirteenfold increase from a year earlier.
One of the beneficiaries of this uptick in investment appears to be the city of San Francisco. Despite the wealth of doom scrolling content about San Francisco’s downtown area, the Bay Area is still a hub for innovation and technology. And while some workers left the city during the pandemic and continue to advocate for remote work, many are starting to make their way back to the City by the Bay.
The migration back to San Francisco is indicative of a larger trend: Despite mounting pressure on venture capital in a difficult economic environment, money still pours into generative AI startups.
While traditional AI has been around for some time detecting patterns and classifying data, Generative AI can produce new content and synthetize data to create chat responses and deepfake videos.
We’ll get more into details about how Generative AI changes the game for executive search in a separate blog post. The prime takeaway is that AI can and will greatly enhance the efforts of executive search firms but will never be able to replace the genuine human interaction that constitutes the majority of the work.
In the meantime, for more information on global venture funding as of May 2023 by stage Crunchbase has a great comparison to 2021 and 2022 to gain an overall picture of the state of global venture funding currently.
And if you’re still not clear on Generative AI, McKinsey has a great article and overview of what Generative AI is vs traditional AI.
We work in the “Human” business but are excited about how the new AI technology can enhance our efforts. More to come…