Is Google Gemini The ChatGPT Killer?

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∆ Tech in the News

EU AI Act Near - An all-nighter produced a handful of provisional AI regulatory rules but sticking points still prevent a full agreement as discussions continue.

Visa’s Blockchain Storage Locker - Visa wants to patent a blockchain-based “universal record” system for recording your entire life. Social Credit System?

Stealing Gemini’s Thunder - Meta just revealed 20+ new AI features across search, messaging, ads, assistant, celebrity personas live, and an image generator trained on 1.1B FB images and benchmarks for LLM cybersecurity.

Expect "Five or Six" AI Bills - U.S. Lawmakers leading the year's final AI insight forum plan to apply learnings to Law soon in a bipartisan effort.

AI Chip Supply on The Way - Meta, OpenAI, and Microsoft will buy AMD's new potentially Nvidia-beating MI300X AI chip when it ships early next year.

˚The hottest thing in tech this week

Is Google’s Gemini The ChatGPT Killer?

Google DeepMind just revealed their most powerful multimodal AI yet in Google Gemini, with many already touting it as the app with the best chance of beating ChatGPT. Gary Marcus thinks it may have already matched (or slightly exceeded) GPT-4. Google claims Gemini 'thinks more carefully'. But Google’s stock price reacted poorly so investors and some early users aren’t convinced by this cautious multi-stage roll-out. So what is really going on behind the hype?

Gemini comes in three versions:

• Ultra for complex tasks and enterprise AI (released early next year);

• Pro for scaling across tasks (in Google products 12/13/23); and

• Nano for efficient on-device tasks (currently integrated on Pixel 8 Pro).

Ultra scored 90% on the MMLU benchmark and claims to be the first AI model to outperform human experts across a range of areas. Gemini has next-gen capabilities like sophisticated reasoning, multimodality, and advanced coding tools via Alpha 2 Code. The model also claims to take an entirely different, more integrated approach to multimodality based on how humans think.

Gemini Pro now powers Google’s Chatbot Bard's abilities which upgrades it in tasks like understanding, summarizing, reasoning, brainstorming, writing, and planning, making it likely now the best free chatbot on the market. Nano is powering the Pixel 8 Pro's new genAI features like a "summarize" feature in the voice recording app and a "smart reply" option in Gboard. Eventually, these will be offered to all Android phones giving them an attractive competitor to Siri. Google also announced the Cloud TPU v5p and AI Hypercomputer, its most powerful AI accelerator to enable the next-gen AI workloads Gemini will demand.

News Bytes

• IBM, Meta, AMD & 50+ orgs launch AI Alliance for "open innovation”

• Microsoft CoPilot is on OpenAIs latest models, and soon to offer others

• McDonald's will use Google's genAI tools to optimize its stores’ ops

Deals We’re Watching

Founders to Watch and Opportunities to Catch

Open Deals:

SpaceX - Elon Musk’s space company is considering selling shares to raise $500M to $750M valuing the company at $175B (up on $150B earlier this year.)

X.AI - Elon Musk's AI startup is raising up to $1B equity with $134.7M already sold… Musk denied he is currently raising, so either he already has the full $1B or hasn’t started yet.

Airship AI - A bootstrapped stealth AI startup with no VC funds raised will go public after clearing SEC regulations for a SPAC deal at a pre-money equity value of $225M.

Closed Deals:

Gecko Robotics - Gecko added $100M to its Series C led by Founders Fund and the US Innovative Tech Fund for its AI infrastructure maintenance robots already adopted by the US Navy.

X-Energy Reactor - The small modular nuclear reactor and fuel technology startup extended its Series C by $80M to $235M total raised.

MaintainX - This startup raised $50M Series C funds at a $1B valuation led by Bain Capital to build software to optimize clients’ maintenance ops.

Liquid AI - An MIT-spinout emerged from stealth with $37.5M in seed funds at $303M pmv to build a small-scale ‘liquid neural network’ backed by Samsung Next, Bold Capital Partners, and ISAI Cap Venture.

On (ex-GameOn) - The Sports chat company raised $25M (total $80M) to pivot to conversational enterprise AI across multiple industries.

EnCharge AI - The startup raised $22.6M in a round led by VentureTech Alliance and TSMC to bolster its AI chips and “full stack” AI solutions.

Companies to Watch:

"DNA Typewriters" - UW, Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative, and Allen Institute invested $75M in a hub to revolutionize biology with DNA storage.

Replicate - This startup’s platform lets devs try out 25k+ OS AI models and just raised a $40M Series B (at $350M) from A16Z, YC, NVentures, and Sequoia.

Air Space Intelligence - Alaska Airlines and the U.S. Defense Dept. use the Flyways AI platform to assist flight operators in monitoring environments, and a16z just led a $34M Series B round bringing its valuation to ~$300M.

Opal Security - The startup’s AI-driven identity access platform saw 4x ARR growth and closed a $22M Series B to expand its platform.

Spade - a16z, Gradient, YC, and Dash Fund all backed a $10M Series A for this startup using real-time data to identify card fraud.

Rightbot - Amazon’s Industrial Innovation Fund invested $6.25M in this startup’s robotic arm freight unloading tech solutions.

The Funding Buzz

Congruent - The VC turned down over $300M for its third (heavily oversubscribed) climate tech fund, raising $275M.

Renown Capital - The Daily Mail's owner and Moore Capital launch a VC firm with $200M seed to focus on seed and early-stage cleantech startups.

Intuitive Surgical - The VC arm of Intuitive secured $150M to invest in 10+ Seed-Series B startups in care coordination, precision diagnostics, and MedTech.

Roadrunner Venture Studios - The VC firm backed by America's Frontier Fund has made its first startup investments in cleantech, vaccine logistics, and AI.

Tools and Buzzy Tech

'Animate Anyone' - Alibaba’s tool generates AI video animations from images.

Fentanyl AI - Customs agents are using AI from startup Altana to stop the drug’s precursors coming into the U.S.

Whale Talk - AI-aided analysis may help decode and translate whale language.

General Motors - Signed a deal with Autocar to use its hydrogen fuel-cell tech.

Pimento - Turns creative briefs into visual mood boards with genAI.

Reebok - Partnered with Futureverse on AI-driven gaming and metaverse experiences for shoppers.

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

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The Tech Buzz Teamoogle