Mistral Releases New Models, Q2 2023 AI Funding Hits $24.2 Billion, Karpathy Launches AI-Focused Eureka Labs

Happy Thursday everyone!

Welcome to AI Weekly Digest 📬 Your essential AI briefing, carefully curated by me, Rubén Colomer, AI Specialist and GP at Next Tier Ventures. Stay ahead of the curve with the latest AI breakthroughs, key funding news, innovative tools, thought-provoking reads, must-attend events, and the best AI job opportunities - it's all here!

News 🗞️📰

• Eye On AI: Q2 2023 Funding Shows Investors Are Willing To Open Their Checkbooks. Such startups saw more money in 2Q than they ever have before, raising a whopping $24.2 billion in 1,001 deals.

• OpenAI Unveils New AI Classification System Amid Breakthrough Reports

• Amazon Announces AWS App Studio, a New Generative AI-Powered Service to Create Applications in Minutes

• Microsoft’s new AI system ‘SpreadsheetLLM’ unlocks insights from spreadsheets, boosting enterprise productivity. You can find more technical information in the published paper in the tech section

• Mistral has launched two new smaller and specialized open-source language models: Codestral Mamba and Mathstral, both with 7B parameters.

• OpenAI is developing a new AI project called “Strawberry” to enhance AI reasoning capabilities. Although details are scarce and closely guarded, internal documents reveal the project aims to enable AI to plan ahead and autonomously navigate the internet for deep research.

• Andrej Karpathy, who directed artificial intelligence for Tesla and co-founded OpenAI, is launching startup Eureka Labs to build “a new kind of school that is AI native”.

Funding 💼💸

• Helsing, a military AI startup based in Germany, has raised a whopping €450 million at a valuation of €5 billion. The series C was led by General Catalyst, with participation from Elad Gil, Accel, Saab, Lightspeed, Plural and Greenoaks.

• Captions Raises Series C to Invest $100M in Pioneering AI Video Research in New York City. Funding was Led by Index Ventures with Participation from Kleiner Perkins, Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital, Adobe Ventures, HubSpot Ventures, and Jared Leto.

• Hayden AI Technologies, the leader in vision AI solutions for smart cities, announced $90 million in new growth equity financing. The Series C round was led by The Rise Fund, and was supported by existing investors such as the Drawdown Fund and Autotech Ventures, among others.

• UK-headquartered healthcare AI company Huma has raised $80 million series D funding, bringing its funding to over $300 million. The Series D saw the participation of new and existing strategic and financial investors, including AstraZeneca, Hat Technology Fund 4 by HAT SGR, HV Fund by Hitachi Ventures, Leaps by Bayer and others

• Artificial intelligence chip startup DreamBig Semiconductor Inc. has closed a $75 million equity round of funding, co-led by the Samsung Catalyst Fund and the Sutardja Family, and saw participation from new investors such as Hanwha, Event Horizon and Raptor, plus existing backers such as UMC Capital, BRV, Ignite Innovation Fund and Grandfull Fund.

• Standard Bots, a NYC-based company which specializes in robotics automation, raised $63M in funding. The round was led by General Catalyst with participation from Amazon Industrial Innovation Fund and Samsung Next. As part of this round, Max Rimpel of General Catalyst will join the company’s board alongside existing board member and lead seed investor Itai Tsiddon.

• Vectara, a Palo Alto, CA-based provider of a generative AI product platform, raised $25M in Series A funding. The round was led by FPV Ventures and Race Capital. Additional investors included Alumni Ventures, WVV Capital, Samsung Next, Fusion Fund, Green Sands Equity, and Mack Ventures.

• LegalFly, a pioneering legal AI platform based in Belgium, announced it has raised over €15 million in Series A funding led by Notion Capital, with participation from Redalpine and Fortino Capital.

• Greencode Ventures, a prominent pan-European venture capital firm specializing in green transition solutions, has co-led a $3 million investment in ZeroMission, a leading provider of electric vehicle (EV) fleet management software. This funding round also saw participation from Delta Partners, Vireo Ventures, and notable angel investors.

• Here’s the full list of 28 US AI startups that have raised $100M or more in 2024

M&A 💰

• AMD has decided to strengthen its position in the field of artificial intelligence by acquiring the Finnish company Silo AI, the largest private AI laboratory in Europe for $665 million.

• U.K. chip company Graphcore has been acquired by Japan’s SoftBank. The acquisition by SoftBank, which has experience with U.K. semiconductor companies like Arm, is seen as a strategic move to bolster its AI aspirations with advanced semiconductor technology.

• Technology-powered talent advisory Sinecure, Inc. announced today it has acquired recruitment services firm Strategy Source in a move to enhance its unique market position as the only talent company to combine the power of AI with the personal touch of experienced advisors.

• Forwrd.ai Acquires LoudnClear.ai, a multi-layered conversational AI platform for customer service teams, to Expand Predictive Model Capabilities.

• Pinnacle Technology Solutions has successfully completed the acquisition of QCM Technologies, a prominent technology solutions provider based in Scottsdale, AZ.

• Capacity, an AI-powered support automation platform relentlessly focused on improving the customer journey, has acquired CereProc and SmartAction, significantly expanding its voice and Contact Center offerings.

• AI voice supplier ConverseNow acquires fellow provider Valyant AI The deal is expected to accelerate ConverseNow's AI drive-thru business and help both companies scale faster.

Interesting Reads 💡🤔

• How to use ChatGPT-4o for research and data analysis. This overview guide will provide more insight into how you can use ChatGPT-4o to research data for reports for business or academic needs.

• What exactly is an AI agent?. AI agents are supposed to be the next big thing in AI, but there isn’t an exact definition of what they are. To this point, people can’t agree on what exactly constitutes an AI agent.

• A data leader’s technical guide to scaling gen AI. The emergence of gen AI is forcing data and AI leaders to revisit their data platforms. Companies that move now can position themselves well for the data-driven future.

• How Apple Intelligence is changing the way you use Siri on your iPhone.

Tech 🤖💻

• KAN, Kolmogorov-Arnold Networks: A New Alternative Enhancing Accuracy and Interpretability of Neural Networks.

• llm.c project reproduces the complete GPT-2 model (1558M parameters) in C/CUDA, without using typical deep learning libraries like PyTorch or JAX. In 2019, training GPT-2 required a full team and was a complicated process. Now, thanks to improvements in hardware (H100 GPUs), software (CUDA, cuBLAS, cuDNN, FlashAttention), and data (FineWeb-Edu dataset), it is possible to reproduce the model on a single unit with 8 H100 GPUs in 24 hours, at a cost of $672.

• SpreedSheetLLM: Encoding Spreadsheets for Large Language Models, is a framework developed by Microsoft to enhance large language models' ability to understand and analyze spreadsheet data. It uses an efficient encoding method which significantly reduces token usage and improves performance in tasks like table detection and spreadsheet question-answering.

Tools 🧰🛠️

• PixVerse: Create breath-taking videos with AI. Transform your ideas into stunning visuals with our powerful video creation platform.

• Superjoin.ai: Import live data into Google Sheets automatically using AI. Pull live data from your favorite tools without writing any code.

• Typeflow.ai: Build AI Tools in minutes without coding.

• Audioscribe: Open-source AI tool to turn voice into structured notes.

• TaxGPT: Your AI-powered tax assistant: accurate, saves time, and dedicated to maximizing deductions.

• Nailedit: ChatGPT vs Claude vs Gemini. Compare multiple LLMs side by side with one prompt.

AI Jobs 👩💻👨💻

• PhD Machine Learning Fall Internship 2024 (Pinterest) - Remote, US - $11,000 / monthly - US based applicants only

• Staff Machine Learning Engineer (SurveyMonkey) - Remote, US - $171,360 - $257,040 / year

• Senior Product Data Scientist, Pricing (Waymo) - $183,000 - $232,000 USD

• Senior software engineer, backend (Scala) - UK

• Principal Machine Learning Engineer (Dropbox) - Remote, US - $227,800 - $385,200 USD

Events 🪩🎉

VDS (October 23-24) - Valencia, Spain *SPONSOR*Valencia Digital Summit is a major technology event that gathers innovators, entrepreneurs, and business leaders from around the world to discuss the latest trends and advancements in digital technology. This year, artificial intelligence will be a fundamental focus, with dedicated sessions exploring its transformative impact across various industries. Attendees will have the opportunity to engage with AI experts, participate in workshops, and discover innovative AI applications that drive business growth and societal advancement.You can get tickets here, become a sponsor or exhibitor, submit a call for speakers, or join the startup competition.

• Conversational AI Innovation Summit (September 5-6) - San Francisco, CA, USA Focused on the latest advancements in conversational AI technologies such as chatbots and virtual assistants. The summit brings together industry leaders to discuss innovations and applications in this rapidly evolving field.

• K1st World Symposium (September 5-6) - Stanford, CA, USA An international symposium addressing key topics in AI research, development, and policy. This event will feature expert talks, panel discussions, and networking opportunities for AI professionals and researchers.

• Generative AI for Automotive USA 2024 (September 9-11) - Detroit, MI, USA A conference dedicated to exploring the applications of generative AI in the automotive industry, focusing on innovations in vehicle design, manufacturing, and user experience enhancements.

• AI Hardware & Edge Summit (September 9-12) - San Jose, CA, USA This summit will cover the latest advancements in AI hardware and edge computing technologies. Industry experts will discuss new developments, applications, and future trends in the field.

• AI for Defense Summit (September 11-12) - Washington, DC, USA A specialized summit focusing on the use of AI in defense and national security. Discussions will include AI-driven defense strategies, ethical considerations, and technological advancements.

• Machine Learning in Quantitative Finance (September 16-18) - Amsterdam, Netherlands A conference dedicated to the application of machine learning in quantitative finance, featuring expert talks, case studies, and panel discussions on the latest trends and challenges in the field.

• Responsible AI Summit (September 16-18) - London, UK This summit will focus on the ethical, legal, and social implications of AI. Topics include AI governance, transparency, and the development of responsible AI practices.

• AI for Pharma and Health Care (September 24-26) - Amsterdam, Netherlands A conference exploring the applications of AI in the pharmaceutical and healthcare industries, including drug discovery, diagnostics, and patient care improvements.