AI startup Arcee AI completes Series B funding round, valued at $1 billion.

According to Fortune, AI startup Arcee AI announced the completion of its Series B funding round, raising at least $150 million with a pre-money valuation of $1 billion. The round was led by Vista Equity Partners, Cambium Capital, and Emergence Capital, with participation from Microsoft M12, Hitachi, Wipro, and other investors. Founded in 2023 by Mark McQuade, an early employee at Hugging Face, Arcee AI focuses on developing open-weight models. The company trained four open-weight models, including the 400-billion-parameter model Trinity Large, for only about $20 million, achieving performance comparable to Meta’s Llama 3 and leading Chinese models. The funding will support new model R&D, product expansion, and deeper collaboration with the U.S. Department of Energy.