17th Edition: 12/8/23

Dec 10, 2023

Marking Copilot's first anniversary, Microsoft just revealed a slate of powerful upgrades to the AI assistant, including GPT-4 Turbo integration, improved DALL-E image generation, and new features like Code Interpreter
Microsoft's Medprompt improves GPT-4's performance in medical applications by employing a unique prompting method, integrating dynamic few-shot selection, self-generated chain-of-thought reasoning, and choice shuffle ensembling
Amazon’s AI chatbot Q (launched last Friday) reportedly leaked sensitive information, including AWS data center locations and details of unreleased features, as revealed by employees in leaked documents obtained by Platformer
Redfin launches AI tool allowing home shoppers to virtually redesign rooms and generate new furniture configurations using catalogues from Bright MLS
- Digs implications
Airship AI, a Seattle-area edge computing company for computer vision AI models + never raised outside investment, set to go public via a SPAC merger
Google rolled out its long-awaited Gemini multimodal AI model at GC HQ in Seattle, touting its ability to natively process and reason across different inputs like text, images, video, and code
- General feedback from AI engineer friends says it lags far behind GPT4 in accuracy

Spiffy AI (Seattle, WA) raised $6M in Seed funding led by P72 Ventures, joined by Sorenson Ventures, J4.Ventures, and AI2
- Working on Outcome-Oriented Models (OOMs), a new type of AI that improves over time toward a specific goal - TFTD $6M
- CEO: Aniket Deosthali
Carbon.ai (Seattle, WA) raised $1.3M in Seed funding from Treble Ventures and MKT1
- Helps companies connect external data sources to their large language models - TFTD $1.3M
- CEO: Derek Tu
Settlement Intelligence (Portland, OR) raised an undisclosed Seed round from Verify Venture Studio
- A legal technology business that provides expert-trained artificial intelligence and machine learning to legal practitioners - TFTD unknown
- CEO: Charlette Sinclair
Carbon Robotics (Seattle, WA) raised $8M in Series C extension funding from FUSE, Voyager, Anthos, and Sozo Ventures
- Makers of a weed-zapping machine powered by artificial intelligence and computer vision technology - TFTD $80M
- CEO: Paul Mikesell
Trendio (Bellevue, WA) raised $4.6M in Seed funding led by Madrona, joined by Kima Ventures, Angel Ventures Mexico, 10X Capital, and several others
- AI-optimized video platform designed to engage with viewers to recommend products - TFTD $4.6M
- CEO: Alejandro Perez-Tenessa

AI video startup Runway ML just announced a partnership with stock media giant Getty Images to develop a powerful new generative model (not-so-creatively named Runway & Getty Images Model, or RGM)
Meta launches “Imagine with Meta,” a standalone web-based generative AI experience for creating high-resolution images from text prompts, similar to DALL-E and Stable Diffusion
Apple introduces MLX and MLX Data, open-source machine learning frameworks designed to efficiently run on Apple Silicon. MLX, inspired by PyTorch and Jax, allows data to be processed on supported devices without movement, enhancing efficiency
Liquid AI, an MIT spinoff led by robotics expert Daniela Rus, is developing a new type of AI dubbed liquid neural networks. These networks, smaller and less resource-intensive than traditional AI models are cheaper for personalization (TFTD $107.5M)
Elon Musk just announced that xAI’s ChatGPT competitor Grok is officially rolling out to X Premium+ subscribers, unleashing the Twitter-trained uncensored chatbot to the public for the first time

French AI startup Mistral is reportedly closing a mega $488M round from backers like a16z to value the firm at around $2B
- AI engineer friends building on Mistral AI say it’s the only modelt hat matched GPT4's accuracy. Way better than Google, Meta or Amazon
Consultancy McKinsey estimates that generative AI tools could boost bank profits up to 15% or $340 billion annually via increased productivity
Meta, IBM, and over 50 other companies, universities, and organizations just announced the formation of the ‘AI Alliance,’ with the mission of advancing open and responsible AI innovation
As BTC crosses $40k, many are wondering if there are intersecting AI projects with cryptocurrency. Here’s a breakdown from Forbes of the leading AI crypto projects according to their market caps
McDonald's is leveraging Google's generative AI tools to build digital upgrades — including an ‘Ask Pickles’ chatbot that provides restaurant employees guidance on equipment cleaning and maintenance
OpenAI reportedly agreed to buy $51 million worth of AI chips in 2019 from Rain NeuroMorphics — a startup CEO Sam Altman previously invested over $1M in personally - which supercharged its GPT-2 development

Bite-Sized AI