∆ Tech in the News

Free Speech Hearing - The Supreme Court heard arguments on Florida and Texas laws to limit social media censorship alleging bias against conservatives.

Tyler Perry: "All Hands on Deck" - The Hollywood mogul halted an $800M studio expansion after seeing OpenAI’s Sora, predicting mass job losses across the industry and urging unions and Congress to act.

Mistral x Microsoft - Microsoft signed a multiyear partnership with the French AI startup, trading a minority stake for launching Mistral's models to Azure cloud clients (including the just announced “Mistral Large” LLM).

"AI Access Principles" - Microsoft seeks to address competition probes over its OpenAI partnership by covering app store access, data privacy, and more.

Biden Robo-Call - A New Orleans street magician claims he was recruited by a campaign consultant for Democratic presidential candidate U.S. Rep. Dean Phillips to create the now notorious AI call mimicking Pres. Biden’s voice.

The Hottest Thing in Tech this Week

Wearables, AI Phones + More at MWC

MWC in Barcelona is the largest global event for the connectivity ecosystem. Day One has already featured some huge products, announcements and news from some of the biggest tech brands, with mobile AI and wearables key trends.

Mobile Phone Breakthroughs

Google announced new Android features and teased "breakthroughs" in compressing LLMs so Gemini will run on phones, cars and wearables by 2025.

Deutsche Telekom’s "AI phone" replaces apps with generative AI assistants.

Huawei spinout, Honor, launched its Magic 6 Pro smartphone with an experimental eye-tracking AI function that remotely opens and moves your car.

Elon Musk demoed Starlink’s Direct-to-Cell satellite with SpaceX Tweets from Space on an ordinary Mobile Phone.

Motorola's bendy phone concept can be rolled around your wrist.

Wearables

Samsung unveiled the new Galaxy Ring with on-board sensors to measure heart rate, movement and breathing to monitor health and sleep patterns.

OnePlus’ released its Watch 2 smartwatch with 100 hours of battery life.

Doublepoint displayed its WowMouse gesture-touch control smartwatch app.

Most Buzzy Concepts

Xiaomi released the skateboard riding, backflipping CyberDog 2 robotic dog now on sale for $3k and unveiled its first-ever electric car, the SU7.

Lenovo unveiled its much anticipated ThinkBook Transparent Laptop concept.

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Fantasy Buzz Poll

Learn more and see the results and our analysis from January here >>

Deals We’re Watching

Founders to Watch and Opportunities to Catch

Open Deals:

Looking to invest? Let us know if you want a warm intro —> [email protected]

1. Democratizing Financial Planning - NYC, NY - VC-backed, “SEC-registered AI RIA” making complex financial planning accessible for underserved. Led by fintech entrepreneurs, post-revenue. Seed Stage.

2. Reducing Enterprise Litigation Risk - Hayden, ID - AI platform detects harmful communication in email/text, intercepting before damage. Investors include Sequoia, Emerson, Microsoft Execs, and more. Global financial institution deals underway. Series A Bridge.

3. Online Leadership Development in Exit Negotiations - SF, CA - Led by proven serial entrepreneur/ex-Microsoft exec negotiates acquisition by major learning company (e.g., Masterclass). Users include Amazon, J&J, St. Jude, California State Parks, Western U. Seeking bridge funding ahead of potential Q2 2024 exit, offering 2X return or stock option.

4. Seed Stage AI Financial Guidance Platform - Rochester, NY - Enables financial firms to increase conversion 10x and improve retention. Ex-JPMorgan exec. $50K ARR with 1 credit union and $7.8MM pipeline. Raising seed to onboard clients and pass security diligence.

5. Targeting Staffing Company Acquisition - Cincinnati, OH - $40M ARR. Blue Color staffing marketplace. Raising for tech-optimized M&A to acquire more revenue. M&A Deal.

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

Closed Deals:

Thermal Batteries - CA startup Antora Energy closed a $150M Series B led by a tie-up between Blackrock and Singapore state investment firm Temasek.

$850M Valued Medical AI - Pittsburgh startup Abridge raised a $150M Series C at $850M led by Lightspeed and Redpoint to expand its AI models and team.

Blockchain Infrastructure - Seattle “Restaking” startup EigenLayer took $100M Series B funds from a16z. It was founded by a former UW professor.

Data Curation AI - San Fran startup DatologyAI raised an $11.65M seed backed by Adam D'Angelo; Google’s Jeff Dean; Meta’s Yann LeCun; Cohere's co-founders and Intel's former AI VP.

AI Investment Copilot - Seattle startup Finpilot just raised a $4M seed to use AI to assist financial analysts with investment research reports.

Companies to Watch:

$100M from Bezos - CA robotic worker startup Figure AI is raising another $675M at a $2B pmv from OpenAI, Nvidia, Intel, Samsung, & Amazon.

Discover Daily AI Podcast - Perplexity partners with ElevenLabs on a fully AI-generated daily news recap that made the top #200 news podcasts in a week. It also just partnered with Korea's largest telco to offer AI search to its users.

IPO Watch — Reddit revealed $203M in revenue from AI data licensing in its IPO prospectus after just revealing its Google data licensing deal last week.

The Funding Buzz

Life Sciences VC - Hong Kong/Mass. VC ORI Capital secured $260M towards its fund II for early-stage biotech startups in diagnostics, therapeutics, and drug delivery for cancer, metabolic, and neurodegenerative diseases.

Fathom Fund - A Houston stealth VC/incubator emerged with $100M for its debut fund to back deeptech startups including microchip and satellite firms (even those at pre-revenue stage).

AI-Focused Fund - Silicon Valley VC Mayfield partners with Seattle incubator Pioneer Square Labs to seed-fund PSL spinout AI startups with $1.5M minimum.

Open Deal — Fundrise - The U.S. online investment platform owns 218k ($7M) of shares in Anthropic in its Tech Growth Fund. Retail investors can get exposure via this fund at ~$32 a share.

Trending Tools and Buzzy Tech

Trending Tools

Mistral - Announced GPT-4 rival enterprise LLM & a Microsoft Azure deal.

Google Chrome - Gemini now powers 'Help me write' AI generation feature.

Lexica - Unveiled its Aperture v4 near 4k image generation model.

FlowGPT - Open alternative to OpenAI’s GPT Store where GPT builders earn tips.

Buzzy Tech

Hypersonic Flight - Stratolaunch’s reusable hypersonic vehicle for weapon use.

'FOLDING car' - The World's first foldable electric car will shrink to just 3.2 feet.

Tesla - Optimus humanoid robot now walks at 0.6 meters p/s, a 30% increase

Micron - High-bandwidth memory semiconductors for Nvidia's new AI chips.

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