The Most Game-changing Tech and Trends You Missed from CES

∆ Tech in the News

Sounding AI Alarm - New IMF analysis predicts that AI will hit ~40% of jobs and worsen inequality, especially in advanced economies.

Non-Invasive Brain Monitor - Neural Networks helped the discovery of a graphene strip that reads deep neuronal activity from the surface of the brain.

Quietly Adapts Policies - OpenAI has revised its policies to permit Military Tech use and to forbid political uses like impersonating politicians, use in campaigns and lobbying, or discouraging voting.

Copilot For All - Microsoft (now the world’s richest company) launched a $20/mo Copilot subscription to consumers, offering AI-within Office apps.

Amazon Rival - FedEx plans to launch "FDX," a data-driven e-commerce platform with services like order fulfilment, tracking, returns, and on-app delivery estimates.

Drying Up - Uber will shutter Drizly, an alcohol delivery service it bought three years ago for $1.1B. Drizly suffered a data leak and related FTC privacy problems.

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˚The Hottest Thing in Tech this Week

The Most Game-changing Tech and Trends You Missed from CES

Most Buzzy Product 

The Rabbit R1 is a $200 AI Assistant gadget that accesses your apps and does stuff. It’s a nice-looking device with a fun, whimsical brand. This explains why they sold 40,000 units within 4 days of launch.

Best Auto Innovator

Kia’s PBV - ‘Platform Beyond Vehicle’, is a modular car design platform that could power at least nine Kia vehicles. This game-changing concept has real potential to deliver since manufacturing is generally the hardest and most expensive part of car production and PBV unifies the task.

Best Laptop Tech

The ThinkBook Plus Gen 5 Hybrid has a Windows PC on the bottom as the base, and a removable Android tablet on top as the display. Simple but clever.

Best HealthTech Product

Withings’ BeamO “multiscope,” device can perform four health checks in under a minute, combining them into a powerful heart and lung monitoring tool.

Best Augmented Body Tech

The Every Muscle Suit exoskeleton from Innophys lightens back load and muscle exertion by adding auxiliary force essentially making items 5x lighter.

Best Spatial Computing Tech

Sony’s XR head-mounted display and controllers optimized for intuitive interaction with 3D objects and precise pointing will unlock spatial computing in the Siemens Industrial Metaverse taking mixed reality uses past entertainment.

Trend 1: Industrial Metaverse

Companies like Siemens, D-space, NVIDIA and others are pioneering infrastructure that could 10x the capacity for human progression over the next 5 years. Real Digital Twins will not only be for buildings and infrastructure, but also tap into biology, nature, and more. See our recent feature here.

Trend 2: Translation Apps

There were a few real-time AI translation tools at CES which translate speech into your ears via earbuds or to a device via text. This trend brings seamlessly multilingual planet communications closer than ever.

Trend 3: Transparent TVs

OLED TVs took a huge leap forward with transparent displays from both Samsung and LG with likley uses for displays in public spaces and the commercial sector. Is this the biggest TV format shift in decades?

Trend 4: AI - Pretty much everything above involves AI to some extent, and there wasn’t much at CES that wasn’t touched in some way by the tech trend.

Reach out to us if you want to be an early user of any of the tech above: [email protected].

Deals We’re Watching

Founders to Watch and Opportunities to Catch

Open Deals:

Raising for your startup? Send us your Open Round —> [email protected]

CorralData - Securely and accurately use AI to drive insights from company data. Current customers incl. Pfizer, Lacoste, & Hotel Engine, $1M in ARR, 7x growth in ’23. Closing out their Seed Round after previously raising $1.5M from known angels.

Kismet Health - Unlocking quality care for families via the first pediatric LLM and proprietary collaborative care tech. Open SAFE round to unlock a $100M DHA contract.

“Watch Ads. Get Paid.” - Fabric eliminates middlemen in programmatic ads creating an ‘opt-in’ marketplace for users and advertisers. Seeking 1-2 strategic investors before launching their Series A later this year.

Looking to invest? Let us know if you want a warm intro —> [email protected] 

Closed Deals:

Crypto Unicorn - licensed Hong Kong crypto exchange HashKey raised $100M at a $1.2B valuation to build its web3 ecosystem and HK-licensed products.

Revenue Operations Software - Ryan Westwood acquired Fullcast and closed a $34M seed round to push the RevOps industry forward.

Employee Intelligence Platform - Stealth startup Avante led by ex-OliveAI and Amperity execs raised a $10M seed led by Fuse.

AI-Powered Trip Planner - Startup Steller added $5M to a $22M Series B to launch a new collaborative trip planning feature called Trips.

ML-Powered RealEstate - Proptech startup ReAlpha has sold off its short-term rental properties to free up capital for new ML-driven purchases in Q2.

Companies to Watch:

#1 RegTech 50 2023 - 2023 Fintech innovator award winner Detected landed $2.5M from backers including Thomson Reuters to build its business onboarding tech that is trusted by the biggest names in payments.

Space Lasers - Japanese startup EX-Fusion partnered with EOS Space to develop laser beam tech to address the growing space debris problem.

The Funding Buzz

Precision Health Incubator - Illumina Venture Labs launched in the U.S. & U.K. offering labs, state-of-the-art tech and R&D expertise to early-stage genomics and other PH companies.

Khosla Ventures - Former partner Keith Rabois returns to the firm as a managing director to help in deploying the $3.1B raised via recent funds. 

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It’s a new year, new Buzz! Stay tuned for more of our latest releases and don’t forget to check out Fantasy Buzz if you have not done so already! And be sure to check out our year-end stories for 2023 to recap what you missed last year and our tech to watch in 2024!

1. AI recap of 2023 

2. Your Top Stories of 2023

3. 5 Tech Trends to Watch in 2024

Stay buzzy and Happy New Year!

The Tech Buzz Team