OpenAI's Humanity-Threatening AGI Breakthrough

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∆ Tech in the News

Nvidia Sued - Auto tech company Valeo has filed a suit claiming Nvidia stole confidential information passed on by a former employee now at Nvidia.

Good & Bad - Neuralink’s PRIME Study will test its neural interface to enable quadriplegics to control devices via thoughts. However, four House reps asked the SEC to investigate if Musk misled investors about the implants’ safety.

CZ Flight Risk - US Prosecutors sought to arraign Binance’s co-founder in the U.S. until his sentencing following a $4.3M plea deal on ML charges.

'Assistant with Bard' The new AI-enhanced version of Google Assistant with integrated YouTube AI summaries will roll out in the coming months.

The Point - Unicorn Inflection claims its new LLM beats Google's PaLM 2 in reasoning and knowledge and will power a public AI assistant for their Pi chatbot.

˚The hottest thing in tech this week

Q* - A Dangerous OpenAI Project Caused Internal Chaos

OpenAI was working on an advanced model so powerful it alarmed staff. Reuters reports that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman's firing last Friday may have been prompted by a letter from several staff researchers warning the board of a powerful AI discovery that could threaten humanity. The sources at OpenAI cited another major factor to be serious concerns over Altman's commercializing of advances before fully understanding the consequences.

The sources believe this is all related to a project called Q* (Q-Star) which could be a breakthrough in the search for AGI. The new model was able to solve grade-school math problems, which represented an ability to continue learning autonomously. The incident, however, highlighted who is really in control, Microsoft intervened and Altman was back and the Board was replaced by one with no scientists, no ethicists, one Economist, and two CEOs with a background at Facebook and Twitter. This says a lot about the new regime of OpenAI.

News Bytes

• Musk says xAI's 'Grok' will launch to X Premium+ subscribers next week

• Neural networks have recreated a Klimt frescoe destroyed by Nazis

• IBM plans to train 2M learners in AI by 2026 via SkillsBuild generative AI

• Amazon to win unconditional EU nod for iRobot acquisition

Deals We’re Watching

Founders to Watch and Opportunities to Catch

Open Deals:

MOOV - A super app/hub for school info + events in mobile-native student-friendly language. Traction: Bootstrapped to $106k ARR, 190k-student Philly District Pilot. Raising $500k with $100k committed. Watch Video and get in touch.

Athena Capital - Raising a $500M equity and debt capital fund to invest in private and public mission-driven tech and ESG companies, takeovers and SPACs.

Pocket FM - Indian Audio entertainment startup with $160M ARR (up 6x in ‘23), has expanded into the U.S. and is raising $80M led by Lightspeed at ~$800M valuation.

Closed Deals:

Layer AI - The startup helping gaming companies be more productive raised $1.8M from Breakpoint Capital, 500 Global, and Laton Ventures.

Rephrase.ai - Adobe acquired the Indian AI video startup to bolster its genAI video capabilities. VC firms Lightspeed Venture Partners and Silver Lake exited.

Birdseye - AI-driven eCommerce firm, raised a $3M seed round to develop its hyper-personalized loyalty campaigns for retailers.

Alpheya - Raised $300M to offer real-time data and AI-powered wealth management services including a CRM, financial planning, portfolio construction, and trading tools.

Privy - The crypto firm closed an $18M Series A round led by Paradigm to grow its on-chain solutions library. Paradigm's co-founder joined the Privy Board.

Companies to Watch:

AI21 - Enterprise-focused AI solutions startup added a $53M Series C extension ($208M Total) at a value of $1.4B to develop its products and grow the team.

Vivodyne - A drug discovery biotech startup raised a $38M seed round led by Khosla to create lab-grown human organs for AI testing of drug responses.

Ninety - The cloud-based enterprise software firm with 10k+ businesses on its platform closed a $35M Series B from Blue Cloud, Catalyst, and Insight Partners.

Expanso - A distributed data processing startup led by Google and Microsoft vets took $7.5M in a seed round co-led by General Catalyst and Hetz.

Lasso Security - Samsung Next backed the LLM cybersecurity company’s $6M raise led by Entrée Capital.

The Funding Buzz

Twelve Below - This New York VC firm raised $108M across two new funds to back fintech, healthcare, energy, SMB, and consumer sector startups.

Menlo Ventures - Uber and Warby Parker backer raised $1.35B to invest heavily in AI startups across a flagship fund, a growth fund, and affiliated funds.

Tools

Sonia - A fully AI-powered cognitive behavioral therapist 

iPhone Hack - Turn ‘Action Button’ into a ChatGPT voice assistant instead of Siri

Stability AI - Releases stunning new Stable Video Diffusion Model

Adobe - Acquired next-gen AI video company Rephrase.ai

Google Bard - YouTube extension can watch videos and answer content queries

Sonos - Will launch its new high-end wireless headphones next spring

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

Thanks for connecting with us.

The Tech Buzz Team