Imbue, a startup in artificial intelligence, announced that it has raised over $210 million in cash overall after securing an extra $12 million in follow-on funding to its Series B round. Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt and Amazon.com's Alexa Fund are investors in the round extension. Imbue announced its $200 million Series B investment at a valuation of over $1 billion in September.

Imbue is a member of a select group of businesses with the financial resources to create foundation models, AI systems trained on big datasets that are capable of carrying out a range of jobs, from writing to coding. Developers of foundation models like Microsoft-backed OpenAI, which released the successful product ChatGPT late last year, are responsible for the growth of generative AI.

Imbue is working to develop a model that will allow so-called autonomous agents, or AI systems, to carry out more complex personal and professional duties like scheduling meetings or doing intricate data analysis without direct supervision. Imbue CEO Kanjun Qiu stated in an interview that developing AI with stronger reasoning capabilities is the key to developing AI systems that can carry out significant, real-world jobs.

"We want to enable agents that people can actually use and that work reliably, and ultimately the vision is to reinvent the personal computer so that it's actually truly personal". According to Qiu, Imbue would utilise the funds to purchase computing resources and hire more personnel. She cited the company's current emphasis on hiring a data executive and more product-focused engineers.