8/11/23

∆ Tech in the News

First Commercial Space Flight For Virgin - Virgin launched its first space flight carrying three private paying passengers to 262,000 feet on Thursday.

TSMC x Bosch and Others in EU Semi-Conductor Partnership - $10B+ euros is set to be invested, 70% owned by TSMC and backed by EU and Germany in this new venture.

iDisney? Mega-Deal Rumor Gains Steam - Iger reignited rumors placing Disney in ‘maybe for sale’ mode, a deal that would shake up Hollywood with anti-AI strikes across the industry.

Pentagon Unveils Department of AI - The US Government launches Task Force Lima to assess and integrate GenAI across federal agencies. However, the FEC voted to consider a ban on AI in politics and is seeking public input.

Google + Universal + AI vs. AI-Deepfakes - The tech and Music giants are in talks to license artists' music for authorized AI-generated remixes, in a bid to combat "deepfake" music like the notorious fake Drake and the Weeknd collab in March.

˚The hottest thing in tech this week

The Free Ride is Over for AI Bot Scraping

OpenAI has just launched GPTBot, a web crawler to improve future AI models like GPT-5. GPTBot filters out paywall-restricted sources and sources that violate OpenAI's policies or privacy laws. Site owners can now restrict GPTBot’s access as OpenAI attempts to adhere with standards being set by publishing partners.

At the same time NYT has stated it will enforce legal action against AI bots scraping its content, with many other publishers considering similar steps. This comes as calls grow for bots like GPTbot to be "opt-in" rather than "opt-out" placing the onus on companies like OpenAI to protect online data, not on site owners.

Deals We’re Watching

Founders to Watch and Opportunities to Catch

Closed Deals:

Moove Races to $550M Valuation - The fast-growing African mobility fintech has secured $76M from Mubadala & BlackRock to expand across 13 markets and transform vehicle financing for ride-hailing drivers.

New Billion Dollar LLMOps Player - Weights and Biases Raises at a $1.25B valuation led by Daniel Gross and ex-GitHub CEO Nat Friedman.

Virtualitics Shatters 3D Data Limits - The CA-based Startup raised $37M in a series C round led by Smith Point Capital. With $67M total raised, they will expand their multi-dimensional datasets 3D visualization tech.

Deepset Secures $30M Growth Fund - The platform for building LLM-powered enterprise apps closed a $30M Series B led by Balderton Capital.

AI to Reshape Cloud Observability - Middleware grabs a $6.5M Seed Round led by 8VC to fuel growth of their AI-driven cloud observability insights tools.

Game-Changing Healthcare Automation - Basys.ai has secured $2.4M from Nina Capital, Eli Lilly, and Mayo Clinic to launch pilots with two large insurance payers to automate healthcare prior authorization.

Companies to Watch:

Snorkel Dives Deeper into Google Cloud - Snorkel AI has strengthened its collaboration with Google Cloud to offer its data platform for foundation models to enterprise clients.

AI's New Frontier in Legal Tech - BriefCatch’s oversubscribed $3.5M Seed round to build AI-powered legal writing software is the 'Deal of the Week!' says legal industry expert David Lat.

Neuralink Forges Ahead with Another $280M - Musk's brain implant startup’s Series D, comes right after a C round in June as FDA ok’s human trials.

Open Deals

Hive AI Aims to Soar Past $2B Valuation - Visa, Netflix, and Reddit's go-to service for AI content moderation is seeking $200M Investment in an upcoming round following a recent $85M Series D led by Glynn Capital.

Tome Courts Investors - The AI-powered presentation design startup with 1M+ users is reportedly in talks with investors to raise a $60M funding round targeting a $600M valuation (2x current value).

With Mode Mobile:

Turning Smartphones into “EarnPhones” - Mode Mobile is closing out a growth round after making $24M in revenue last year with its ‘EarnOS’ attracting 40M Beta mobile users. Mode’s round is open to TechBuzz subscribers now.

IPO Watch

Serve Robotics Going Public - The autonomous sidewalk delivery Uber spin-off is going public through a reverse merger, and just closed a $30M round led by Uber, Nvidia, and Wavemaker to scale up a partnership with Uber Eats

Know of a tech startup on the rise or leading the way? Clue us in and we'll spotlight them in our next issue.

Thanks for tuning in.

The Tech Buzz Team