9/26/23

∆ Tech in the News

Amazon Bets on Anthropic - The $4B deal gives Amazon a minority ownership stake in OpenAI rival Anthropic and seals a strategic partnership to advance genAI using AWS as its ‘primary cloud provider.’

Musk: Tesla Bot “Majority of Tesla’s Long-Term Value.” - Tesla’s Optimus humanoid robot can now sort objects and do yoga, showing significant progress in its fluid movement training enabled by FSD-developed neural nets end-to-end.

Microsoft Goes Nuclear - MS is hiring for a manager of nuclear technology to implement a global ‘small modular reactor (SMR) and microreactor’ energy strategy to power its data centers.

Drivers Disappointed - California Gov. Gavin Newsom has vetoed a bill that would have required human drivers to be present in self-driving trucks arguing existing regulations are sufficient.

Writers Deal Reached? - The WGA and AMPTP reached a tentative agreement to end the longest-ever WGA strike (4.5 mths) if approved by WGA members.

˚The hottest thing in tech this week

ChatGPT To 'See, Hear and Speak'

Last week we wrote about the rise of Multimodularity and how Open AI and Google are racing to dominate the next generation of multi-format AI. Well, OpenAI just took a major step forward in the race, with a major update making ChatGPT multimodal by enabling voice conversations with users and interaction with images. This moves ChatGPT closer to AI assistants like Siri or Alexa and even potentially heads of competition from more personality-focused AI like Meta’s new Personas, or Character.ai which we also featured here.

ChatGPT Plus and Enterprise users will soon be able to ask the bot to analyze and react to any image they upload with requests such as translating signage or identifying objects. Voice inputs will only be available on the ChatGPT mobile apps for Android and iOS but Image inputs will be available on the web too.

Five voice options by recording artists will be available to offer spoken replies, bedtime stories or to resolve a debate at the dinner table. This will be powered by near-real-time ‘speech-to-text’ and ‘text-to-speech’ models converting input voice into text and tapping GPT-4 LLMs for content. OpenAI is also sharing this text-to-speech model with a handful of other companies, including Spotify, to translate celebrity podcasts.

This news coincided with Amazon announcing a $4B investment in OpenAI rival Anthropic, maker of the Claude 2 chatbot, and news last week on work to enhance the Alexa digital assistant and Echo smart devices with GenAI.

Who do you back to own the multimodal and interactive AI future?

News Bytes

• Snap partners with Microsoft on ads in its ‘My AI’ chatbot feature

• NASA asteroid sample parachutes safely onto Utah desert

• Leaked Pixel 8 Pro deal shows Google will throw in a free Pixel Watch 2

Deals We’re Watching

Founders to Watch and Opportunities to Catch

Closed Deals:

“Early Cancer Detection” - Genome testing startup Adela closed a $48M round from F-Prime Capital, OrbiMed and others, to advance their new tech for ‘Minimum Residual Disease’ monitoring and cancer genome screening.

‘Monorepo’ Tools - Nx, an innovative Dev Tools startup has seen significant growth in enterprise customers and revenue. A $16M Series A funding round was backed by a16z and Nexus Venture Partners.

AI Solution for Marketers - Genus AI provides an AI platform for D2C and e-commerce brands to generate content and grow social audiences. An $11M Seed backed by Aleph will expand US ops and reach.

Global Energy Transition - UK startup Continuum Industries uses AI to help infrastructure developers complete projects. A $10M Series A round was led by Singular, with Credo and Playfair.

Connecting Coaches - TeachMe.to a sports coaching platform active in 100 US cities closed a $2M Seed Round led by 1984 Ventures to scale the platform, launch a new app, and expand beyond sports offerings.

Companies to Watch:

“Social AI Platform” - CoreWeave made a strategic investment into Chai at a $450M valuation cap to power its large-scale AI language model and provide infrastructure support to manage Chai's growing user base.

Custom Server Chips - Oracle agreed to prepay $104.1M for processor chips based on Arm tech made by startup Ampere Computing and also announced a $400M investment via a convertible note.

AI Discovery Deal - Danish giant Novo Nordisk taps US firm Valo Health to use AI to develop treatments for cardiometabolic diseases. Valo will take an upfront payment of $60M + $2.7B in potential milestone payments.

$29 Primary Care - NY Medical care startup Sesame inked a deal with Costco to offer $29 appointments to Costco members. Sesame has 125M members, $52.6B in net sales, raised $27M in 22, and is backed by GV & Virgin and others.

Gates Backed Climate Tech - Green Hydrogen startup Peregrine spun out of Gates’ Orca Climate Incubator and has now raised a $7.8M Seed backed by Bidra Gates Frontier, RiSC Capital and others.

Open Deals:

BrandArmy - Offers creators robust fan-monetization features with more control. Approaching seven figures of monthly revenue, the startup is raising a $3M SAFE now - click here to meet with Ramon Mendez, CEO.

GlobalStudy - Transforming International student recruitment with a productivity-boosting, AI-driven platform that gives counselors superpowers. The platform is live after rigorous testing. Click here to meet CEO Cal Barton.

Tools

BoilerCode- Ship your SaaS super fast with Boilerplate NextJS code with AI

Monday.com - New AI templates to help you hit the ground running

If you have a deal or company that you would like to host on our next issue, drop us a line at @ [email protected].

Thanks for connecting with us.

The Tech Buzz Team

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