Dan Shipper, the founder of the media start-up Every, says he gets asked a lot whether he thinks robots will replace writers. He swears they won’t, at least not at his company.
“I want to make a lot more great writing,” he said during an interview at the company’s airy Brooklyn office, “particularly great writing about technology.”
But there’s a reason he gets asked.
Mr. Shipper’s five-year-old company has put artificial intelligence at the center of its business model. His writers, like those at numerous other media companies, write about developments with the technology. Every, though, also uses generative A.I. to create software products, including an online writing tool, that are core to its business. Subscribers pay $200 a year for access to those tools, which has led to about $1 million in annual revenue.
That revenue is tiny in the booming world of A.I. But Every’s business has generated intense interest inside media circles — and become something of a Rorschach test for the news industry. It is a symbol of A.I.’s potential to empower journalists or unemploy them, depending on your point of view.
On Wednesday, the company announced that it had raised $2 million from a group of investors including Reid Hoffman, the venture capitalist and founder of LinkedIn. That round values Every at $25 million, Mr. Shipper said.