General Catalyst leads $1.1B round into 2-month-old River AI
Babuschkin, whose resume includes AI roles at DeepMind and OpenAI, intends to reinvent AI from scratch, beginning with how models are trained. This is in order to turn agents into personally trainable assistants, rather than following the trajectory other AI labs are on: human worker replacements. “To get there, we believe the stack has to be rebuilt end to end: training, models, the product layer, and new hardware that lets personal AI live close to you,” he wrote in his launch blog.
- ▪Babuschkin, whose resume includes AI roles at DeepMind and OpenAI, intends to reinvent AI from scratch, beginning with how models are trained.
- ▪This is in order to turn agents into personally trainable assistants, rather than following the trajectory other AI labs are on: human worker replacements.
- ▪“To get there, we believe the stack has to be rebuilt end to end: training, models, the product layer, and new hardware that lets personal AI live close to you,” he wrote in his launch blog.
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| Original publisher | TechCrunch |
| Canonical URL | https://techcrunch.com/2026/08/11/general-catalyst-leads-1-1b-round-into-2-month-old-river-ai/ |
| Publication time | Tue, 11 Aug 2026 17:41:22 +0000 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-08-11T17:45:43.201Z |
| Last seen | 2026-08-11T17:45:43.201Z |
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Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
River AI, an AI startup founded by xAI co-founder Igor Babuschkin, has secured $1.1 billion in funding in a seed/Series A round led by General Catalyst and AMP PBC, with participation from Nvidia, AMD Ventures, Y Combinator, and Temasek. (AMP PBC is an AI-focused investment firm founded in 2026 by former Andreessen Horowitz general partner Anjney Midha, backer of companies at a16z like Black Forest Labs, Mistral AI, LMArena and OpenRouter.) River came out of stealth in June with a fascinating mission. Babuschkin, whose resume includes AI roles at DeepMind and OpenAI, intends to reinvent AI from scratch, beginning with how models are trained.
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