14th Edition: 11/17/23

MSFT blindsided by OpenAI drama, while still teaming up to unveil "Maia-100" chip to help Azure datacenter processing efficiencies...

PNW AI News:

• Microsoft blindsided by OpenAI Board's decision to oust Sam Altman as CEO, but despite their multi-billion investment, had no corporate controls provisioned. Regardless, Satya Nadella announced un-waivering plans to partner with them

• Microsoft unveils custom AI chip, in partnership with OpenAI, called the Maia 100 to help Azure datacenter processor efficiencies and compete with AWS

  • They also announced a new Cobalt CPU to help run general cloud computing loads

  • Microsoft's Ignite 2023 conference also included Azure AI copilot, Bing Copilot, and O365 AI announcements here

• UW Computer Science Department research event offers glimpse into the future of AI talent in the PNW, with a focus on incorporating AI automation into existing tools

• Amazon's Alexa division slashes 100's of jobs, signaling a focus away from consumer electronics towards AWS AI capabilities

PNW AI Fundings:

• Wokelo AI (Seattle, WA) raised $1.5M in Seed funding from SeaChange Fund, Pack Ventures, Upsparks Capital, and strategic angels

  • AI-powered research assistant and co-authoring platform intended to create fidelity factually bounded reports and presentations quickly - TFTD $1.5M

  • CEO: Siddhant Masson

• 4AG Robotics (FKA Techbrew Robotics - Vancouver, BC) raised $14.6M in Series A fudning from BDC Capital, InBC Investment, Lex Capital, and Emmertech

  • Computer Vision Guided Robotics and Automation for industrial processes - TFTD $14.6M

  • CEO: Sean O'Connor

• Ambyint (Calgary, AB) raised an undisclosed post-Series B round from Montrose Lane, Mercury Fund, BDC Capital, Accelerate Fund, and Builders VC

  • AI-powered optimization software designed to help the oil and gas industry to deliver step-change improvements to E&P production outcomes - TFTD $26.5M+

  • CEO: Benjamin Kemp

Key AI Product Updates:

• YouTube and Google DeepMind team up and revealed a AI model called Lyria to clone artist voices and co-create tools with musicians, to circumvent the AI voice licensing issues YouTube is facing

• Meta announced AI-powered creative tools called Emu Video and Emu Edit, being integrated into Facebook/Instagram, to generate short video clips and animations using text prompts, images, or both

• Nvidia announced enhanced AI computing platform that is coupled with the HGX H200 chip, offering 141 GB in memory at a whopping 4.8 TB/s speed, significantly outperforming any competitive offering

  • Sales of this unit are expected to surge 170% this quarter

• Dell and Hugging Face partner to simplify LLMs deployment in a strategic move for Ai integration in businesses

• Adobe's new AI tool "Project Sound Lift" is an advanced tool to help filter out and eliminate background noises from recording and live audio

• MIT AI researchers developed an agent called JARVIS-1, which was trained by doing >200 tasks in Minecraft, achieved a gaming logic breakthrough which can react to game situations dynamically. They plan to license this to Unity

Key AI Business/Investment Updates:

• Airbnb acquired GamePlanner.AI for $200M, an enigmatic AI startup that never emerged from stealth

• Menlo Ventures raised $1.5B in a new fund to support forthcoming generations of AI startups like portco's Pinecone, Anthropic, and more

• Forward Health just raised $100M in funding and introduced CarePods, a standalone station to provide medical testing and diagnosis using AI

• Google in talks for multi-billion investment into startup Character.AI, an AI chatbot startup that can mimic individual personalities

• OpenAI is luring Google's top AI researchers with $5-10M/yr salary offers, part of their strategy as their valuation surpasses $80B

• JPMorgan is teaming up with US regulator on generative AI pilot projects for AI-curated earnings reports, helpdesks, etc. with tight controls