∆ Tech in the News

China-US Deal - The two leading global powers are expected to agree to limit the use of AI in autonomous weapons and nuclear systems at APEC summit.

“Most powerful GPU” - Nvidia’s new H200 high-end GPU chip designed to train and deploy AI models 2x as fast as the H100 will be ready by Q3 2024.

Top of The Pops - The Beatles have achieved their biggest hit ever as their AI-assisted single, "Now and Then," debuted at No. 1 on the digital sales charts

180 Jobs Gone - Amazon is trimming its gaming-related workforce for the second time this year in a strategic refocus.

Google vs Scammers - Google is suing five individuals for allegedly tricking users into downloading a fake “Malware” version of its Bard AI software

˚The hottest thing in tech this week

OpenAI’s AGI ‘Superintelligence’ Plans

OpenAI went on the offensive this week with a number of announcements including, ChatGPT-5, their AGI roadmap, and news about their big recruitment push. Sam Altman is reportedly tapping Microsoft for more capital as the market leader looks to build “superintelligent” tech tools as smart as humans. Expanding the current $10B “multiyear” deal seems like a good idea given all the plans on the table. This includes finding ways to build up computing power and sourcing more training data to power this superintelligence, along with the release of GPT-5 (maybe by December). They will also likely have some security costs as GPT-4 Turbo model is just now live after an update following a turbulent week of outages and degraded performance caused by DDoS attacks by hacker groups.

OpenAI is also going to need that extra capital for its new strategy of luring Google’s AI researchers with compensation packages as high as $10M per year. They are said to be exploring a secondary sale at a valuation of $86B to help fund these packages. Altman also expects better supply of chips next year with the new Nvidia H200 chips just announced and Microsoft’s Athena chips coming online. The rivalry is heating up as Google is also in talks to invest hundreds of millions into Character.AI, a direct rival to OpenAI’s new GPTBuilder, coming hot on the heels of last week’s investment in Anthropic. At least Sam doesn’t have to worry about Elon Musk and his “cringey boomer humor” powered, less censored “Grok” chatbot and massive X social data gathering tool… right?

How far away do you think artificial ‘superintelligence’ is?

News Bytes

• US government aims to free up more wireless spectrum

• AI that reads brain scans shows promise for finding Alzheimer’s genes

• OpenAI and Anthropic join Macron’s effort to censor “terrorist” content

• IBM announces a revolutionary Analog AI Processor for DNNs

Deals We’re Watching

Founders to Watch and Opportunities to Catch

Open Deals:

Google Eyes Character.AI - Google is in talks on an investment at $5B+ valuation in the popular decentralized chatbot app competing with OpenAI’s new GPTs tool.

AR-Enhanced Surgical Precision - SURGLASSES raised $6.5M Pre-A funding to bring its 3D, real-time AR surgical navigation system to expand in the U.S.

Debt Management Startup - Ottopay is seeking new funding for its ‘freemium’ app consolidating consumer debt info and tailoring payoff plans.

Closed Deals:

Bionic Hands - Bionic prosthetics maker Aether Biomedical raised $5.8M in new funding led by J2 Ventures and Story Ventures.

Co-branded Cards - Fintech Imprint just raised $75M Series B from Ribbit, Thrive, and Kleiner Perkins to scale their co-branded credit cards service.

Health AI Integration - Abridge lands $30M to expand integration of its real-time patient conversation AI tech in the U.S. healthcare sector.

“20k+ Acres by 2024” - Aigen Robotics closed a $12M Series A to boost its AI crop management robots' deployment in precision agriculture.

Expanding Capacity - Qualcomm is investing $127M to expand its Ireland R&D facility, adding 150 engineering jobs over four years.

Amazon x Snap - A new deal will let people buy Amazon products directly from Snapchat ads in addition to last week’s similar deal made with Meta.

Companies to Watch:

Youtube Founder’s AI App - Chad Hurley’s new startup EyeTell helps creators generate engaging video content and just raised a seed from A-Star & SV Angel

“Lookalike” Data Tech - Spectrum Labs founder Justin Davis launched custom private LLM startup Nurdle from stealth backed by Intel and Greycroft.

Carbon Bricks - Graphyte, backed by Bill Gates’ Breakthrough Energy Ventures, announced its affordable, plant-based brick carbon storage solution.

InCred-ible - Consumer lending tech startup InCred is India’s second 2023 Unicorn with its $60M Series D round from a16z, Deutsche Bank, Menlo + others.

Making Trax - Blackrock-backed Israeli AI startup Trax raised $50M from Deutsche Bank to help retailers monitor and improve in-store shelf conditions.

The Funding Buzz

Interplay - The NY-based VC firm with $150M AUM, closed its 3rd fund at $45M to invest in 20 Series A stage B2B marketplaces and vertical software startups.

Axom Partners - Three Qatalyst bankers formed their own M &A advisory firm to specialize in mergers & acquisitions in the booming AI sector.

Oraseya Capital - The Dubai Integrated Economic Zones Authority's (DIEZ) VC division launched a $136M fund to back startups from pre-seed to Series B stages.

Tools

Zapier AI Actions - New tool lets AI platforms run Zapier's 20k+ automations.

Motion Brush - Runway’s new tool allows for more intuitive movement control.

Uptrends.ai - Provides AI stock market news alerts on market trends.

Plaiday - Create AI videos Using YOUR own Face.

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