E68: 12/13/24

Google's Willow quantum breakthrough, 12 days of OpenAI continues, Google's Gemini 2.0 and Projects Mariner+Astra, another $20B datacenter investment, etc.

Hey everyone, Here’s this week's AI Newsletter, after the first half of my week spent at the Neural Info Processing Systems (NeurIPS) Conference in Vancouver… it attracted top researchers, engineers, entrepreneurs, investors, etc. from all over the world. I learned about…

• "AI explainability" at the neuron-level

• Best practices for finetuning LLMs

• Evaluation benchmarks

• How to generate diverse and applicable synthetic data for training

• New chips from Amazon and Google

• Transitioning from research to a commercial startup (thanks Ryan/Point72!)

Finally, congrats to FUSE founder Philip @ Lumen Orbit on finally announcing the $11M Seed raise!

Now to the main event.

PNW AI News:

• A new group sparked by governor Jay Inslee, organized by the WA Dept of Commerce is focused on attracting federal funding from the CHIPS and Science Act and bolster the state’s semiconductor industry

• Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman is putting together a new London-based consumer health division, recruiting key ex-DeepMind health experts including former unit head Dominic King

Key AI Product/Research Updates:

• Google’s 105-qubit “Willow” processor has cracked the code on quantum error correction, scaling error reduction exponentially with added qubits

  • Huge step function in viability of commercial/deterministic quantum computing

    • Willow completed a computation in 5 minutes that would have taken the world's fastest super computer a septillion (10^25) years

• Apple added ChatGPT to its Intelligence features in iOS 18.2 and macOS Sequoia, embedding it within its Apple Intelligence ecosystem

• OpenAI's 12 days of Christmas sprint continues…

  • Day 2: OpenAI's new Reinforcement Fine-Tuning (RFT) method gives its o1 models the ability to tackle complex tasks with minimal training data

  • Day 3: OpenAI finally released Sora, a text-to-video powerhouse at 1080p, now accessible to ChatGPT Plus and Pro subscribers

  • Day 4: OpenAI released Canvas, now open to all web users

  • Day 5: OpenAI's Apple Intelligence support^

  • Day 6: OpenAI added live video and screen sharing to Advanced Voice Mode, now accessible to Teams, Plus, and Pro users

• Google just launched Gemini 2.0, marking a major leap into AI agents with enhanced multimodal abilities, native tool integration, deep research generation, and more…

  • Google’s Project Mariner introduces a AI agent that autonomously interacts with websites, simulating human browsing actions within Chrome, taking actions

  • Google’s new Jules AI agent will help developers fix buggy code, using Gemini 2.0 to address Python and Javascript coding issues in Github

  • Google's Project Astra brings multimodal conversation abilities with 10-minute memory, native integration with Google apps, and near-human response latency

• Anthropic quietly rolled out Claude 3.5 Haiku, its fastest model, expanding from its previous API-only availability

• Google Cloud launched its Trillium TPUs, which feature 4x faster AI training and 3x higher processing speed than the previous generation

• Cognition Labs has officially launched Devin, its AI developer assistant, targeting engineering teams to help with bug fixes and automated PR creation

• Sakana AI introduced Neural Attention Memory Models (NAMMs), an evolved memory system for transformers that improves performance and efficiency across different AI models without retraining

Key AI Business/Investment Updates:

• Crusoe raised $600M in Series D funding led by Founders' Fund at a $2.8B valuation to power AI with vertically integrated infrastructure

• Google announced a new $20B investment with Intersect Power and TPG Rise Climate to develop industrial parks featuring data centers and clean energy facilities

• Anthropic introduced Clio, a system that reveals patterns in how people actually use AI assistants worldwide:

• Nvidia expanded its hiring in China, adding over 1,000 employees in 2024, including 200 new Beijing-based researchers focused on autonomous driving

PNW AI/ML/CV Fundings:

• Lumen Orbit (Redmond, WA) raised $11M in Seed funding led by NFX, joined bY FUSE, Soma Capital, Y Combinator, Sequoia Scout, MTV VC, Caffeinated Capital, and more

  • Building datacenters in space onboard satellites, to train AI models - TFTD $13.3M

  • CEO: Philip Johnston

• Reveal Tech (SF/Bozeman, MT) raised $11.2M of Series A funding led by Next Frontier Capital, joined by Defy Partners and 8VC

  • Advanced AI-driven situational awareness technology designed to empower defense and public safety teams – TFTD $18.2M

  • CEO: Garrett Smith

• PixelTable (Seattle, WA) raised $5.5M in Seed funding led by The General Partnership, joined by Liquid 2 Ventures, Exceptional Capital, South Park Commons, and several angels

  • Full-stack development platform intended to unify and streamline the entire AI/ML workflow – TFTD $5.5M

  • CEO: Pierre Brunelle

• Nowadays (SF/Seattle, WA) raised $2M in seed funding from E14 Fund, Hike Ventures, Decacorn Capital, SBXi and others

  • AI-based event planning copilot designed to ease the process of organizing corporate events. – TFTD $2.5M

  • CEO: Anna Sun

• Special Touch Nursing Services (Salem, OR) raised $1.3M of Seed funding led by LSK Investment

  • Health management services intended to revolutionize elderly care through AI-powered diagnostics – TFTD $1.3M