E53: 8/23/24
Humanoid robots, big tech push back on the EU AI Act and California's AI Bill, more OpenAI media licensing deals, Salesforce automous SDR agent, new lightweight SLMs, a $4.9B AMD acquisition, and more
Happy Friday everyone!! Let’s jump right in.
PNW AI News:
After delays due to data liabilities, MSFT is rolling out its "Recall" feature to Copilot+ PCs in October to its initial private beta user cohort, which can record screens to provide recaps/analytics
Microsoft has released three new open-source AI models in its Phi 3.5 series -- mini-instruct, MoE-instruct, and vision-instruct -- which can handle long prompts up to ~125K words
Leaning into Mixture of Experts (MoE) architecture, which selectively activates only relevant parts of the model for each task to save compute power. Here is a rundown on MoE if you want to dig deeper.
They excel at LLM reasoning and support multiple languages, but have limitations in safety
Dropbox acquired Portland-based Reclaim AI, a calendar app that uses AI scheduling to boost productivity that boasts 320K users across 43K companies, on undisclosed terms
Key AI Product/Research Updates:
Salesforce introduced two fully autonomous, AI-powered sales agents, Einstein SDR Agent and Einstein Sales Coach Agent, designed to help sales teams accelerate growth through automation and personalization
OpenAI just launched free fine-tuning (up to 1M tokens per day through September 23) for GPT-4o, allowing developers to customize the model for higher performance and accuracy
Competitive to Seattle-based OpenPipe
Researchers just developed a new AI-based method called NES-VMC that can accurately calculate the excited states of atoms and molecules
Critical to advancing solar panels' (photovoltaics) efficiency
GoDaddy announces major initiatives in AI, focused on helping small business customers generate websites, manage their online presence, execute transactions, and integrate with customer data platforms (CDPs)
Competitive to Vancouver-based Durable AI
NVIDIA and Mistral jointly announced Mistral-NeMo-Minitron 8B, one of the most advanced open-access models in its size class of small language models (SLMs)
Lighter weight SLMs are key to running AI on-device, and their performance is rapidly improving
Midjourney launches a web interface and restores its free trial image generation product
Response to free open-source competitive pressure from Ideogram 2.0, which announced this week
Neuralink's second patient for their brain-computer interface (BCI) was able to use 3D Design software and play the videogame CounterStrike with his brain
Major strides in utility of BCIs
Elon's xAI has begun rolling out early beta access for Grok 2, a powerful new LLM that leverages real-time data from X
AGIbot, a Shanghai-based startup, will begin deliveries from its new humanoid robot factory in October, with plans to ship 200 bipedal and 100 wheeled robots by EOY
Tesla is hiring “Data Collection Operators” to assist in training its humanoid Optimus robot using motion capture technology
Unitree Robotics has officially launched the mass production version of its G1 humanoid robot, which will cost $16K each, just three months after its initial announcement from stealth
A lot of activity in the humanoid robotics space… not sure if I'm a believer in their near term use cases yet
Swiss startup FinalSpark is allowing scientists to rent cloud access to "biocomputers" made of human brain cells (!!!!) for $500/month, in an effort to create AI that uses 100,000x less energy than current systems
Key AI Business/Investment Updates:
AMD agreed to acquire New Jersey-based ZT Systems for $4.9B, ramping up its competitive position with NVIDIA
Mark Zuckerberg and Spotify CEO Daniel Ek have jointly voiced strong objections to the EU's AI regulations, describing them as overly complex and detrimental to open-source AI development
Arguing that Europe will miss out on key innovation opportunities unless regulatory framework of the EU AI Act is reformed
OpenAI has voiced its opposition to a California bill called SB 1047, designed to aggressively regulate powerful AI systems
Arguing that the bill could hinder California's position as a global AI hub and discourage innovation and startup growth
See a pattern^??
California and Google drafted a $300M, 5-year partnership to fund in-state newsrooms and AI initiatives, including a $40 million annual “AI Innovation Accelerator”
Perplexity AI is reportedly planning to introduce advertising on its AI-powered search platform by Q4 of 2024
OpenAI announces content deal with Condé Nast, including content from Wired, The New Yorker and Vogue, to train their LLMs on their content portfolio
Authors sued Anthropic, creator of AI chatbot Claude, on grounds that they trained it on their content without permission, alleging "large-scale theft"
A mayoral candidate in Wyoming’s capital Cheyenne just vowed to let his customized ChatGPT GPT named Vic (Virtual Integrated Citizen) help run the local government if elected
PNW AI/ML/CV Fundings:
Otto (Seattle, WA) raised a $6M Seed round led by Madrona, incubated at their venture studio MVL, with Madrona MD Steve Singh taking an executive chairmen position
An AI-powered virtual assistant for business travel booking – TFTD $6M
CEO: Michael Gulmann
Baseline AI (Mercer Island, WA) raised a $0.5M Seed round from Y Combinator
Leverages artificial intelligence to improve data quality in clinical trials by proactively identifying hidden issues throughout the trial process – TFTD $0.5M
CEO: Zoe Sheill
GetWhys (Boise, ID) raised a $0.27M Seed round from an undisclosed angel
Operator of an AI-powered platform intended to leverage a dataset of peer insights to help organizations make better software decisions – TFTD $0.79M
CEO: Phillipe Boutrous
Pauling.ai (Seattle, WA) raised an unknown amount in a Seed round from undisclosed investors
Developer of a next-generation AI molecular simulation platform designed for drug discovery – TFTD Unknown
CEO: Javier Tordable