10/13/23

AI + Robots in Biomedicine, Starlink Cell Service, No Fakes Act, AI Export Limits, AI error liability, Direct air Carbon Capture Google's SGE adds images, Character.ai group chats and latest deals...

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Alpha
October 13, 2023

∆ Tech in the News

Elon Phone Home - Musk’s Starlink satellite comms project announced the new Cellular Starlink Service will offer text support in 2024 & calling + IoT in 2025.

“No Fakes Act” - A draft bipartisan bill seeks to protect actors and recording artists from any unauthorized AI use of their "image, voice, and visual likeness".

AI Export Limits - The Commerce Department is weighing export limits on advanced AI programs in a bid to limit access by perceived adversaries.

Who’s To Blame - The EU is weighing a Liability policy for deciding who is held liable for AI mistakes. The U.S. is yet to consider this important question.

Cool Carbon - Microsoft filed a patent to freeze carbon dioxide directly from the atmosphere which it calls “cryogenic direct air capture.”

Bankman-Fraud - Caroline Ellison testified that Sam Bankman-Fried directed her to commit fraud and money laundering crimes in the FTX founder’s trial.

[POLL] Will AI transform medicine over the next 5 years?

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˚The hottest thing in tech this week

Here Come The Robots

Robotics and AI biomedical advancements are increasing by the day as AI becomes ever more integrated into our physical world and shakes up industries. Google's recently released DeepMind generalist robotic model, PALM-E is an open model with over 562B parameters that can handle various tasks without input or training by transferring Google’s vast text data into an actual robot. In September Tesla showcased the amazing fluid movement capabilities of the ‘Optimus’ Tesla Bot set to perform dangerous and repetitive factory tasks.

However, one industry set to be transformed faster than all others is medicine. This week alone unveiled the following biomedical AI developments in the field:

What will they think of next?

"LLMs and Generative Pre-trained Transformers (the GPTs) are going to be, already are, and will even be moreso, a true inflection point in human history, standing right up there at the top with other inflection points in human history.”

Dr. Lloyd Minor, Dean of the Stanford University School of Medicine

News Bytes

  • Google offers copyright legal protection to generative AI product users

  • J.P. Morgan facilitates its first blockchain-based settlement trade

  • OpenAI is currently generating $1.3B in annual revenue: The Information

Deals We’re Watching

Founders to Watch and Opportunities to Catch

Closed Deals:

Weaving Video In - Atlassian’s $975M acquisition of Loom video bets big on asynch workplace video messaging and Loom’s 25M customers and 5M users p/mth. But did they overpay?

Cybersecurity Merger - Arctic Wolf Networks acquired Revelstoke Security aiming to expand features, automate cybersecurity tasks, and lower response time to breaches.

Automated Data Solution - Cleanlab closed a $25M Series A round led by Menlo and TQ Ventures. CleanLab is an enterprise-grade no-code tool for curating high-quality data for industry ML pipelines.

Digital Insurance Platform - Matic extended its Series B round with $20M in extra funding co-led by IA Capital Group and Cultivation Capital.

AI Security Reviews - Conveyor raised a $12.5M Series A led by Cervin Ventures. The startup automates security and compliance reviews using LLMs instead of questionnaires with ~96% response automation.

AI-Powered IT Magic - SuperOps.ai closed a $12.4M Series B, to bring the total raised to $29.4M for its AI solutions for Managed Service Providers.

Companies to Watch:

Code-No-More - Prophecy an innovative low-code data transformation platform revered by Fortune 500 companies, has closed $35M in a Series B round led by Insight Partners and SignalFire.

Lipddub - Captions, an AI video editing tools startup, launched video dubbing into 28 languages. Captions claims 3M+ users and 100K DAUs and raised a $25M Series B backed by Kleiner Perkins, Sequoia and A16z in June.

Expanding to U.S. - Cognitive robotics startup Neura Robotics is coming to the U.S. after closing a $16M round led by InterAlpen Partners and adding a new U.S. board member. Their last round raised $55M in May.

Cursor Points Up - Anysphere, embeds AI into software its "AI-native" Cursor, a fork of Microsoft's VS Code. It has “tens-of-thousands” of users and a growing % of them paying clients and now an $8M seed from OpenAI's Startup Fund.

Electric Air Mobility - Purdue-connected startup, Aerovy raised $800k in pre-seed funds from Purdue Innovates, M25, and Flywheel, and announced a new partnership with battery tech maker Electro Base.

Open Deals:

“AI By-And-For Architects” - TwinUp is an AI-powered Metaverse app poised to reshape the architecture industry by condensing the work of a firm into one role. Led by a proven, industry insider team. Speak with CEO Michael Jansen.

Old Dogs New Tricks - A startup taking on the $30B p/a US cargo theft issue with advanced logistics and blockchain tech. The team includes veterans, special agents, and security experts, with experience from Fortune 50 giants to startups. Talk to CEO Farrakh K.

Tools

  • Google’s AI search experience can now generate images, write drafts

  • ElevenLabs - AI Dubbing tool translating speech into 20+ languages

  • Stocked - The simplest way to beat the S&P 500 using AI

  • Klarna - Adds new AI-driven photo feature for online shops

  • Character.AI launches group chats for people and multiple AIs

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

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The Tech Buzz Team+