Apple, Meta & Musk Battle To Control Your Reality

∆ Tech in the News

”Mildly Useful” - An OpenAI-led study found that GPT-4 offers only a “slight increase” over the internet in potential risks like biological threat creation.

No More Robocalls - The FCC proposed ruling use of AI-generated cloned voices in robocalls illegal, following its misuse in the New Hampshire primaries.

Gemini Pro - Google launched new features powered by its latest AI: ImageFX image generator, an updated Bard, AI AI music creation tools, and Maps Search Tools. YouTube Premium also just surpassed 100M subscribers.

"AI Initiatives" - The NYT formed a team to prototype genAI tools for reporting and presentation, though journalism will still be human-written.

AI Giants Falter - Microsoft, Alphabet, and AMD lost $190M in market value on weak earnings reports midweek. Microsoft at least beat Q4 profit and revenue estimates, boosted by its’ AI-fuelled Azure Cloud services growth.

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˚The Hottest Thing in Tech this Week

Apple, Meta & Musk Battle To Control Your Reality

Apple’s VisionPro Headset release today is really big, but even more important is the battle between Apple, Meta, and Elon Musk’s Neuralink over who will control the ability to shape our reality in the coming years as the lucrative “spatial computing” and “mixed reality” market emerges.

Apple’s VisionPro

Stan Schroeder of Mashable says VisionPro launch could well be the most important new product Apple will launch this decade. Why? It's a whole new product category, a new OS - “VisionOS”, and an app ecosystem that launches with 600+ apps. What can the $3,499 unit do? It can operate as an everyday work computer (but get a chiropractor), a social portal into the metaverse, or a gaming unit. For now, the most realistic use case is likely the entertainment display (you’ll be alone currently, though devs are working on ‘shared view’.)

Meta’s Quest 3

The VisionPro’s cost means it’s hardly likely to dominate the market yet, so this opens up an opportunity for Meta’s lower-price $499 Quest 3 headset to compete. The Quest unit can also watch 3D ‘spatial videos’ recorded by and for the Vision Pro, giving it some interoperability as well as access to PC games.

A Glimpse of The Future 

While the VisionPro is pretty amazing in many ways, it’s unlikely to be a serious contender for mass-market eyeballs yet. Neither unit will likely be replacing any of our core devices any time soon, and major barriers to this market remain like the heavy weight on the head and neck, and motion sickness and discomfort, meaning only short sessions are possible for many users.

Meta’s lightweight AI-powered AR smart glasses in partnership with RayBan are more likely to see mass adoption. These offer context-aware information based on what they are looking at and could be an entry point for non-gamers and the older audience into the mixed reality space.

Looking even further into the future, just this week Elon Musk announced the first successful human implant of the Neuralink human-brain interface. This technology is still experimental and its primary focus is on improving life for those with disabilities, but eventually, it could enable us to bypass the clunky external displays entirely and open up an age of bio-computing and trans-humanism. Not quite ready to mess with your brain? It may not be necessary for long, UC San Diego researchers recently discovered a potential non-invasive brain interface tech using neural networks and a graphene strip.

Deals We’re Watching

Founders to Watch and Opportunities to Catch

Open Deals:

Raising for your startup? Send us your Open Round —> [email protected]

MedSpa InsurTech - Accelerating first-to-market aesthetics procedure insurance for US medspas. 700+ plans, 0 claims over 4 locations generating $23K in 12 weeks. On track for 2K+ locations in 2024. Proven track record with multiple startups sold to public companies.

MediaTech Pioneers - A Tech news and investing network with ~1M active users creating opportunities for B2B and startups across Generative AI, FinTech, BioTech, & more. Seeks partners for strategic growth in a private round.

NVIDIA Competitor AI Chip - TSMC manufactured AI chip raising to accelerate production of their market-first chip, with less power consumption and enhanced performance for IOT, cellular, wearables, and more.

Expert-Led Crypto Algo Fund - Long only, spot algorithmic liquid fund. Outperformed Bitcoin over the past 3 years with -32% max drawdown in 2022 bear market (Bitcoin -78%). Discount offered on management fees.

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Closed Deals:

Nvidia-Backed - Chatbot maker Kore.ai raised $150M led by FTV Capital to expand its ‘virtual assistants’ service used by brands like Coca-Cola and Airbus.

School Bus Unicorn - Startup Zum raised a $140M Series E at $1.3B for its AI-powered transport management tools used by thousands of U.S. school districts.

Doubling Down - Cohere Health added $50M to its Series B to power its AI transformation of the prior authorization process, bringing its total to $104M.

AI-Powered Agtech - Predictive design and gene editing startup Inari raised $103M from Hanwha Impact, Canada Pension Plan Investment Board and others.

Coding Assistant - Kleiner Perkins led a $65M Series B into AI coding assistant startup Codeium valuing the firm at $500M.

Industrial Deeptech - Greenerwave raised $15M to deploy the 1st ‘EM wave control tech’ antenna giving connectivity anywhere with a sky view.

Companies to Watch:

Humanoid Robot Unicorn? - Microsoft and OpenAI are in talks to invest up to $500M in startup Figure AI at $1.9B. Figure recently partnered with BMW.

Picks and Shovels - Sutter Hill and Intel-backed Astera Labs sells data center components to AWS and Microsoft, and is eying a March IPO led by Morgan Stanley and JP Morgan at $4B valuation (Astera was last valued $3.15B in 2022)

Healthcare AI - Atropos Health has partnered with Google Cloud to disrupt healthcare ops and clinical advancements by addressing evidence gaps. Atropos recently took strategic investment from Samsung Next and Presidio Ventures.

The Funding Buzz

Alt Capital - Jack Altman (Sam’s brother) raised a $150M VC fund to lead investments in early-stage startups with a focus on enterprise software and AI.

Gates-Backed - Breakthrough Energy secured $555M toward its Select Fund I. The VC typically backs cleantech startups like Boston Metal’s $262M round.

Uncorrelated Ventures - The VC firm raised $315M for a new fund, with 80% allocated to early-stage infrastructure software, and 20% to crypto startups.

TrueBridge Capital - Is nearing its $750M goal for its latest VC fund of funds.

Ubiquity Ventures - Raised $75M for its 3rd fund investing in early-stage startups creating "software beyond the screen" to control the physical world.

Tools and Buzzy Tech

OLMo 7B - AI2 open-sourced a GPT-4-level LLM backed by AMD, Databricks.

AI x Blockchain - Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin wrote a paper on AI.

Cornell - Invented an EV battery that can fully charge in 5 minutes.

The Enhanced Games - Peter Thiel is backing a bio-enhanced Olympics.

Volkswagen - Plans an AI lab to develop breakthrough ideas and prototypes.

Midjourney - V6 of its Anime-tuned text-to-image model is live.

Sync Labs - Convert video to any language with AI-powered lip-syncing.

Shopify - Debuts AI-powered image editor for sellers + semantic search.

Yelp - New AI tools include AI business summaries and insights.

BRILLO - Bartending robot remembers your favorite drink and mixes it.

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The Tech Buzz Team