9/1/23

∆ Tech in the News

X "Everything App” Takes Shape - Elon Musk teased new features to create a “global address book" including video & audio calls, optional Biometric IDs, and even a LinkedIn competitor with job listings and more.

US Blocks Chip Exports to Middle East - New export restrictions have been placed on Nvidia and AMD on AI/ML chip exports to certain Middle East nations similar to China last year.

Chinese Baidu Chatbot Launched - The Chinese tech giant released their ERNIE chatbot and LLM after Government approval and saw a 3.2% share price bump. They were followed by two LLM competitors, Baichuan and Zhipu AI.

AI Drone Beats Humans - The Swift AI just beat the world champions in drone racing by .5 seconds using reinforcement learning and real-time reaction to camera data, with huge significance for potential real-world use in emergencies.

Walmart's AI Workplace App - The My Assistant gen-AI feature of Walmart’s internal app will be rolled out to 50k employees to help summarize large documents or draft questions with more ‘empowerment’ features on the way.

News Bytes

• GM uses Google's enterprise chatbot for in-car concierge service

• UAE’s advanced open-source Arabic LLM to power gen-AI apps

• Quora's AI chatbot Poe launches Enterprise app, new functions

• Apple and Google tease new phones with game-changing tech

˚The hottest thing in tech this week

Google’s Supercomputer-Powered AI Tools

Google’s Next event was all about highlighting the major new GenAI benefits coming to the cloud for enterprises, cementing how GenAI is now an essential part of the professional tool suite after the fastest tech adoption cycle ever.

A Nvidia collab makes Google’s supercomputer and 20 new Vertex AI models available and brings in-demand AI-capable computing power to enterprises. This makes Google Cloud almost a no-brainer for training and serving GenAI models for the 10M existing paid Workspace organizations.
Major Next updates included:

• New AI tools for security 

• New Deepmind tools for watermarking and detecting AI images

• A rebranded ‘Duet’ AI Assistant with Meet note-taking, Auto Gmail drafting, and Table and Slides generation.

Cloud's AI early adopters include ~70+ GenAI unicorns such as Anthropic, Cohere, Jasper, Mosaic, Replit, Runway, and Typeface and big companies like GM, GE Appliances, and Hop using it to power their GenAI features.

Google plans to charge $30 a month per user - the same as Microsoft's Copilot on office.

Deals We’re Watching

Founders to Watch and Opportunities to Catch

Closed Deals:

Eldercare Robotics Nabs Funds - Israeli Intuition Robotics added $25M growth funding led by Toyota Woven bringing its total raise to $83M to fulfil existing partnerships and strengthen the ElliQ's robot go-to-market.

Disrupting Architecture and Engineering - Pirros has raised a $2M seed from YCombinator and FundersClub for their AI platform streamlining creation of searchable and reusable plans with 30 firms+ already using the tools.

AI Startup Solves Fashion Industry Waste - Refiberd’s $3.4M Seed Round will accelerate the development of the textile recycling tech aiming to divert 70% of textile waste from landfills with AI image-based material sorting.

AI Workplace Safety Tech - Voxel raised $12M in a strategic round for their app which is proven to reduce workplace accidents by 80% already. The funds will accelerate expansion into new markets

AI Transforms Performance Reviews - Confirm closed a $6.2M Series A to expand their service making performance reviews more fair and efficient using genAI and co-worker feedback.

Companies to Watch:

Bain-Led Round Mints New Unicorn - Apollo.io’s recent $100M Series D at $1.6B attracted Sequoia, Tribe and Nexus for the full-stack sales intelligence and engagement tool with 160,000+ clients including Stripe, DocuSign, and Utah Jazz.

Hyperproof's Hyper Growth - The SaaS risk and compliance management company tripled its clients and reported a 260% revenue surge since 2022. A recent $40M round led by Riverwood will expand its enterprise-grade offerings.

Otto Disrupts Vet Clinic Management - The software startup has seen user growth of 600% to 8,000+ clinics and hospitals and reduced call volume to clinics by 70% through phone automation. They just added $43M in a Series B.

Former Tesla CTO's Startup Crushes - Redwood Materials is building an EV Battery Recycling Plant in Nevada with a $2B Energy Dept loan, and an extra $1B just raised will further expand its U.S. operations and battery supply chain.

Taking On Google and MS in AI English Learning - Speak's platform is backed by Lachy Groom, OpenAI and two Dropbox founders and has users in 20+ countries. A $16M growth round brings total raised to $63M.

Open Deals:

CoreWeave Eyes $8B Valuation - The Nvidia-backed cloud computing startup is seeking buyers for a ~10% equity stake at a valuation of between $5-8B. CoreWeave expects to see ~$1.5B in revenue in 2024 thanks to its AI-ready cloud infrastructure at scale.

AI Startup AI21 Labs in Funding Talks - The Israeli OpenAi rival, is nearing a new $150M+ round led by Walden Catalyst that would value the six-year-old startup at $1.2B before the new capital - a 20x multiple on revenue projections.

Cohere's Valuation Could Double in New Round - The Oracle and Nvidia-backed ‘LLM customization’ startup is working with JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs on the round seeking a higher valuation than its previous round of $270M at $2.2B.

IPO Watch

Instacart's Filing Shows Momentum - The recent S-1 filing shows Instacart flipped profitable in 2022 with revenue up 39% to 2.55B, orders up 18%, and transaction volume up 16%.

Klaviyo IPO Valuation Dissapoints - Klaviyo, an e-commerce marketing software provider backed by Accel and Shopify flipped profitable in H1 2023, but its valuation is expected to be 40% lower than its last private round.

Tools

Replit - The AI Ghostwriter for coding handles the hard part of getting code. online and just partnered with Google.

HeyData - An AI co-worker to replaces Siri with ChatGPT on your device.

Thanks again for joining us for another impactful week. We are always ramping up our deal flow and will keep you informed of the latest updates in this space.

If you have a deal or company that you would like to host on our next issue, drop us a line at @ [email protected].

Thanks for connecting with us.

The Tech Buzz Team