Stealth AI Startup From Ex-Googlers Raises $40 Million

Essential AI is raising $40 million in new funding, according to a person familiar with the deal, underscoring Silicon Valley’s frenzy to back promising young artificial intelligence companies.

The funding round for the secretive company comes just a few months after it raised $8 million in a deal led by Thrive Capital, according to PitchBook. Thrive is also an investor in Microsoft Corp.-backed OpenAI. The person, who asked not to be identified discussing private deal conversations, did not disclose Essential’s valuation.

Essential was founded by Ashish Vaswani and Niki Parmar, two of the authors of the 2017 paper “Attention Is All You ...