by Doug Gardner 
In a world were startups like Uber are valued at $66.6 Billion, Instagram is valued at $1 Billion and Twitter is valued at $14 Billion it can be hard to see how $50 Million could get the cream of the competitive AI industry. This is especially so when it is reported that none of three companies mentioned above actually make money.
So how can this investment get Salesforce what it wants on the 1 year anniversary of Einstein? Well firstly you have to consider that, although booming, the young AI industry is an industry built around analysing data. As such the option of having access to the Salesforce customer base and the data that that allows is a huge pull. This means that for companies like Highspot and Squirro it is possible to get a huge investment not only financially but also in test beds and expertise by choosing to get investment from Salesforce. This gives them a massive competitive advantage and also the possibility of future financial gain due to the large customer base of Salesforce.
It is also possible to make big advances without that much need for investment when you can offer the support of an amazing sales and marketing team, facilities and a place to work closely with other leaders in your industry.
All of this combines to mean that $50 Million could well go quite a long way to placing Salesforce as ‘the Brick Lane of AI’ when people look for intelligent platforms. And lets face it, with the focus that Salesforce is showing towards this developing area, they are likely to continue gain a strong grip on this emerging technology.
“There is an incredible opportunity for companies and entrepreneurs to create next-generation AI solutions and our goal is to fuel that opportunity,”