The Media is Dying, Long Live Media 3.0

∆ Tech in the News

“Positive Outcomes" - The White House indicates that the U.S. and China will collaborate on AI system safety despite ongoing trade tensions.

On Cloud 9 - Microsoft is expected to report a 15.8% bump in Q4 revenue, its best growth in ~2 years as genAI fuels demand for products and cloud services.

No Deal - Amazon and iRobot ended their merger plans due to opposition from EU antitrust regulators. iRobot now plans to lay off 31% of its staff.

Neuralink - Elon Musk tweeted that the first human brain interface implant took place on Sunday with the patient showing good recovery and “initially promising neuron spike detection” results.

Building Dreams - China's EV giant BYD forecasts 2023 net profit to rise as much as 86.5% y/y as it overtakes Tesla in global EV sales.

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˚The Hottest Thing in Tech this Week

The Media is Dying, Long Live Media 3.0

The Media and Entertainment Industry is expected to hit $1T in Value in 2024, but Legacy Media continues to bleed alongside Tech so far. Business Insider (~8% of staff) and Forbes both announced layoffs last Thursday. Other cuts over the last week alone include the LA Times (~20% of staff) and TIME (several editorial staff.) Jeff Bezos and other billionaire media owners are also losing 'a fortune' on struggling news outlets. The NYT reported Bezos’ WaPo was on track to lose $100M in 2023. While investors may rightly be cautious of Legacy Media investment, there is still a lot of opportunity in the MediaTech space as these legacy players make way for more innovative startups.

What’s Going on Behind the Scenes

Interestingly, Business Insider is owned by Media Giant Axel Springer, as is Politico. In December it announced a partnership with OpenAI to enable ChatGPT to access its paywalled content for training and summarizing. Many publishers are also experimenting with AI behind the scenes for labor efficiencies. Other media companies like NYT have taken the opposite tack, blocking ChatGPT and suing OpenAI. Will either method save legacy Media? Notably, the social media disruption wave of the 2010s hit those unable to adapt hard, while innovators like Vice and Buzzfeed News made early investors millions – ironically to then fail to adapt and file for bankruptcy in 2023.

The New Media Ecosystem

Big Tech and Legacy Media are of course moving fast to converge on GenAI and other media tech innovation. Google and OpenAI’s have been pitching and partnering with major publishers to help them generate AI news content. Apple and Meta are both investing heavily in mixed reality media and the metaverse. Elon is doing Elon bringing AI, fintech, Web3 and decentralized profit-sharing to social media via X. Blog platforms like Substack, Beehiv and several podcast platforms are enabling independent journalists, influencers, and content creators to challenge legacy media online and monetize directly through their audiences.

However, there is also a savvy pool of capital investing in smaller startups pioneering Media Tech. These new ventures are making it easier than ever for creators to distribute unique content using tech like generative AI audio (new Unicorn ElevenLabs), video and image (HeyGen and StabilityAI), and mixed reality and blockchain media (Unicorns RecRoom and Snap which aims to patent “Enhanced book reading with AR glasses”). In the news space, LA startup Channel 1, plans to roll out an AI-generated news site with AI presenters. Such ventures are already showing us glimpses of the future of Media.

VC heavyweights Lightspeed and Andreessen Horowitz are some of the more prominent backers of this media revolution. Lightspeed, who backed Snap and led Beehiiv’s latest series A round one of the biggest competitors, to the a16z-backed Substack. Not to mention the recent launch of a16z’s standalone “techno-optimist” Media arm, ‘Future’. One thing is clear, the future of investing aligns product + attention + incentives, but it’s far from winner-takes-all.

Deals We’re Watching

Founders to Watch and Opportunities to Catch

Open Deals:

Raising for your startup? Send us your Open Round —> [email protected]

MediaTech Pioneers - A Tech news and investing network with ~1M active users creating opportunities for B2B and startups across Generative AI, FinTech, BioTech, & more. Seeks partners for strategic growth in a private round.

NVIDIA Competitor AI Chip - TSMC manufactured AI chip raising to accelerate production of their market-first chip, with less power consumption and enhanced performance for IOT, cellular, wearables, and more.

Looking to invest? Let us know if you want a warm intro —> [email protected] 

Closed Deals:

Buy Now, Pay Later - Sunbit secured a $310M debt warehouse facility from Citi and Ares for its innovative financial solutions in the BNPL sector.

AI Rebel Chip - South Korean AI chip startup Rebellions landed a $124M Series B led by KT to develop its third chip in partnership with Samsung.

Regulatory Tech - Software developer Thentia added $38M to its Series B round to help scale its Reg and compliance tech solutions and invest in AI.

InsurTech Innovator - CarbonPool secures $12M to fortify carbon credit markets by offering an insurance model assuring tangible carbon credit delivery.

Digging It - Digg raised $7M in seed funding led by Oregon Venture Fund for its AI-powered homeowner and builder collaboration platform.

$5B Market by 2022 - Founder Piotr Zin revived his Electric Speed Boat startup Zin Boats after a COVID-19 hiatus with a $1.275M seed raise.

Companies to Watch:

Chinese AR Glasses - Xreal competes with the Vision Pro with the Air 2 Ultra AR glasses it announced at CES along with BMW and Qualcomm partnerships. It also raised $60M (>$300M Total raised) from Alibaba, Nio, & Sequoia.

Google Cloud-Based LLM - Essential AI, a startup by ex-Googlers, leverages Google Cloud’s TPU v5p chips for training and serving models and building their LLMs on Google Cloud's infrastructure.

Flutter Buy? - The parent company of betting app FanDuel, debuted on the NYSE on Monday to capitalize on its U.S. market leader position with a ~50% market share in what is estimated to be a $9B market by 2024.

The Funding Buzz

Acadian Ventures - raised $30M for its second VC fund focused on tech for the future of work: AI, data & APIs, Regulatory & compliance tech & more.

Plans Canceled - Chamath Palihapitiya reportedly pulled the pin on plans to raise a $1B early-stage fund for his VC firm Social Capital per Axios.

YouLend - A global embedded financing platform has transacted with JPMorgan and Castlelake to provide >$5B financing to more SMEs.

Cap VC - This new startup is aiming to build an AI-powered 'operating system' for VCs with an app offering structured data insights for VCs and startups.

Virescent Ventures - The Australian VC firm is raising $200M for its 2nd Clean Energy Innovation Fund focused on food & ag, circular economy & smart cities.

Tools and Buzzy Tech

ElevenLabs - Is the Dubbing Studio the best translation tool in the world now?

Notion GPT - A custom GPT to @mention and send conversations to Notion.

Meta - Launched Code Llama 70B, new version of the LLM for code generation.

Google - ‘Smallville’ AI simulation of reality with generative agents.

PayPal - Introduces AI-driven products and a one-click checkout.

Nomad - First Qi2 15W wireless magnetic charger is $10 less than its MagSafe.

Japan Space - Reestablished communication with the SLIM moon lander probe.

Learnable.ai - Startup automating grading of China's college entrance exams.

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It’s a new year, new Buzz! Stay tuned for more of our latest releases and don’t forget to check out Fantasy Buzz if you have not done so already! And be sure to check out our year-end stories for 2023 to recap what you missed last year and our tech to watch in 2024!

1. AI recap of 2023 

2. Your Top Stories of 2023

3. 5 Tech Trends to Watch in 2024

Stay buzzy!

The Tech Buzz Team