Amnon Shashua has publicly acknowledged that talks are under way regarding a potential acquisition of AI21 Labs, the artificial-intelligence company he co-founded nearly a decade ago.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are talks with Nvidia, there are talks with others, but nothing even close to talking about it in the press,\u201d Shashua said in an interview with Bloomberg.<\/p>\n
Calcalist reported last week<\/a> that AI21 is in talks with Nvidia regarding a deal at a potential value of $2-$3 billion. Shashua\u2019s remarks do not confirm an imminent deal, but they do establish that AI21 is formally in play, and not only with Nvidia.That acknowledgement comes against the backdrop of a reassessment of AI21\u2019s recent history. For much of 2025, the company was widely portrayed as having raised a $300 million Series D led by Google and Nvidia. As reported last week<\/a>, that round never closed. AI21\u2019s most recent completed fundraising remains a November 2023 extension of its Series C, which brought total capital raised to $208 million at a valuation of $1.4 billion.<\/p>\n AI21, founded in 2017 by Shashua alongside Professors Yoav Shoham and Ori Goshen, entered the generative-AI race early, but has struggled to keep pace with the acceleration of rivals such as OpenAI and Anthropic.<\/p>\n The company today employs around 200 people, down from 260 in 2023, after plans to significantly expand its workforce were shelved. It has narrowed its focus to enterprise-oriented language models, halting development of its consumer product Wordtune and emphasizing accuracy-driven tools such as Maestro and a recently launched reasoning model. Estimated annual revenue stands at roughly $50 million, largely unchanged since 2023.<\/p>\n Against that backdrop, a sale, particularly to a strategic buyer like Nvidia, would appear to be driven less by AI21\u2019s commercial footprint than by its human capital. The company\u2019s researchers, many with deep academic credentials, represent a scarce resource.<\/p>\n