Its not normal time in SF/Bay Area. For better or worse, VCs in this city/region are thinking very differently on AI bets.

I think the key differentiator was that a team found a whitespace in what ChatGPT was doing, main comes from the same pedigree and team is as conscious of marketing as their product. SF VCs love these out of the box challengers, and people are claiming to replicate doesn't seem to matter.

The amount raised feels surprising but again entire SF/US AI scene is primarily "add moar layers and GPU" one trick ponies at this point.