To say that 2024 was the year of the AI breakout would be an understatement. From OpenAI becoming a household name, to Nvidia dominating the market, to Alphabet's Gemini launch and Apple getting in on the action with new iPhones, 2025 could bring even more innovation as the incoming administration does plan to wind back efforts to regulate AI, hoping they drive what they call an aggressive innovation agenda. Joining us now is SandboxAQ CEO Jack Hidary. SandboxAQ now valued north of $5.5 billion after a more than $300 million fundraise last week. Congrats on that, Jack.
Thanks, Sarah. It's great news and really puts us in a great position for success in the coming years. We've now raised over $800 million in total between our last round and this round.
So, and you haven't been shy about what you're building. You're building the next Microsoft.
Well, we want to build something at that scale, the scale of Microsoft and Google.
Because while a lot of people are doing great in language models, you mentioned OpenAI and Anthropic, great companies, and a lot of applications with language, the bigger market, the bigger B2B market, is in quantitative AI. AI that drives new drug development, new materials for cars and space and planes. These are the bigger areas of the economy, and I think 2025 we'll have more news from ourselves and many others on B2B AI versus just consumer AI in 2024.
And this is your sweet spot. I mean, we've talked to you on this show many times. Anyone who follows AI should know your name, Jack. But just remind us on what SandboxAQ is doing versus some of these other large language models.
So SandboxAQ, what's the AQ? A is for AI, Q for Quantum. These are the two twin engines that are going to drive our economy forward. AI, of course, because you can look at lots of data and build patterns. But in the area of B2B AI, it's not so much that we use the internet as our training set, that's the language folks here. We actually generate new data based on the core equations, the equations of new drugs, new medicine for Alzheimer's, for Parkinson's, for cancer, new materials that we need for batteries. We're going to see a lot happening in energy in 2025, the build-out of data centers, that means more battery storage. What are those batteries made of? We need AI that knows chemistry, not just cat pictures and Reddit. And so this is going to be a very, very different kind of AI that you see emerging in '25, '26 versus what we saw in '24.
And what types of deals are you signing? Is it for all those things that you're describing?
Exactly. The largest companies in the world, as well as universities and others, they want to use this new kind of AI that is really quantitative in nature versus language in nature. And that's, I think, going to be a big theme that we see for Sanofi, who we've announced as a customer, and many others as well.
I actually had the good fortune to talk to Sanofi when they actually announced they were going to be using AI in some of their drug discovery. I want to ask you, we're talking about B2B AI, what's the overall goal? So you're mentioning, yeah, you can find car parts, but if you throw a lot of money at it, I would imagine you'd be able to find it faster as well. Is the idea here that you're finding it faster with margin expansion, with more profitability? I mean, what's the overall gain here? Because obviously you have to invest in your product, you have to invest in your platform.
Yeah, so I think that people ask us a lot, Frank, how do we play the AI play? How do we invest in AI? And certainly you can invest in particular companies. I think the bigger play '25, '26 is for public investors to look at the public companies in every major sector. So be it pharma, be it automotive, be it energy, there's going to be winners and losers. Companies like Sanofi that are using AI and drug companies that are not really taking advantage of SandboxAQ.
