Visa earmarks $100M to invest in generative AI companies

Visa announced today that it plans to invest $100 million in companies developing generative AI technologies and applications “that will impact the future of commerce and payments.”

The investments will be made through Visa Ventures, the card giant’s 16-year-old global corporate investment arm. 

Visa claims to have been a “pioneer of AI use in payments” since 1993. For the unacquainted, generative AI is an emerging subset of AI trained on large sets of existing data to generate text, images or other content when given text prompts. 

“While much of generative AI so far has been focused on tasks and content creation, this technology will soon not only reshape how we live and work, but it will also meaningfully change commerce in ways we need to understand,” said Jack Forestell, chief product and strategy officer of Visa, in a written statement.

David Rolf, head of Visa Ventures, said that generative AI has the potential “to be one of the most transformative technologies of our time.”

In August, TechCrunch talked with Marie-Elise Droga, who was appointed Visa’s new head of fintech late last year. At the time, she noted that her team “often collaborates” with the Visa Ventures team — serving as sort of a scout engine for Visa’s venture arm.

We’ve reached out to Visa for more details on their investment plans and will update the story when we get them.

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