Igor Babuschkin’s AI Startup Raises $1.1 Billion in Funding

A new startup that achieved unprecedented funding in a short period has drawn attention in the artificial intelligence market. According to ixbt.com, River AI, founded by Igor Babuschkin, one of the co-founders of xAI, raised $1.1 billion in seed and Series A funding during its first two months of operation. General Catalyst and AMP PBC led the major funding round. TechCrunch.com reports .

Major investors including NVIDIA, AMD Ventures, Y Combinator, and Temasek also contributed to the project. AMP PBC was founded in 2026 by Anjney Midha, a former general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, and has previously backed projects such as Black Forest Labs, Mistral AI, LMArena, and OpenRouter.

Rebuilding AI Architecture from the Ground Up

River AI first came to public attention in June this year with a distinctive mission. Igor Babuschkin, who previously worked on artificial intelligence at DeepMind and OpenAI, aims to rethink AI technology from the ground up, starting with the model training process. The company’s primary goal is not to create systems that completely replace human labor, but to turn agents into personally trainable assistants.

According to the founder, achieving this goal requires rebuilding the entire technology stack. This includes the training process, models, the product layer, and new hardware designed to bring personal AI closer to human life. Rather than creating a system that merely completes tasks, the project plans to build a companion that anticipates users’ needs and works in their best interests.

New Opportunities for Developers and Businesses

River AI currently offers API services based on open models at set prices for millions of tokens. The API allows developers to customize models using advanced training and low-level adaptability technologies. Instead of managing models they do not own, the company’s products give users a way to turn open models into genuinely personalized systems and use them conveniently.

Industry experts say that while such a major investment reflects the intense activity in the sector, River AI has emerged at the right time. Today, large enterprises are seeking to control their AI future with open-weight models. Through its new cloud solutions, the company promises to address complex processes in this area quickly and cost-effectively.

According to the company’s ambitious vision, everyone will eventually have a personal agent trained by them and working in their best interests. The growth of locally running personal agents such as OpenClaw, along with NVIDIA’s partnerships with computer manufacturers including Dell, Microsoft, and HP, shows that this direction is becoming increasingly popular. Time will tell how River AI’s technology performs in practice, but the startup has begun this journey with substantial financial resources.