OpenAI's revenue triples to $3.4B, Amazon invests $230M in AI startups, and text-to-video AI models improve.
Artificial Intelligence news, week 25/2024
Happy Thursday everyone!
I'm Rubén Colomer, GP at Next Tier Ventures and this is AI Weekly Digest, a weekly roundup of the latest news, funding rounds, tools, interesting reads, events, and jobs related to Artificial Intelligence.
News 🗞️📰
OpenAI's revenue is skyrocketing ($3,4B). The AI startup's annualized revenue has more than tripled from the summer of 2023.
Amazon announces a $230 million investment in generative AI startups to accelerate innovation and growth in the AI sector.
Most text-to-video AI models have seen improvements with their new updates this week. Runway, PikaLabs, and Luma Labs with Dream Machine are getting closer to what we saw from OpenAI's Sora.
Former OpenAI chief scientist launches own AI company. OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever said Safe Superintelligence would focus on the safe development of AI.
Google is redesigning its search engine. From ‘AI Overviews’ to automatic categorization, is bringing AI to practically every part of the search process.
Japan is looking to lure AI investment away from Europe and elsewhere by becoming the "most AI-friendly country in the world," with a regulation-light approach.
Funding 💼💸
Proofs, which uses AI models to accelerate the proof-of-concept phase in software sales, has raised $2.6M in pre-seed financing. The round was led by Earlybird with support from Expeditions Fund, Step Function Ventures, RTP Global, and a number of angel investors.
Mika, a Berlin-based startup that builds generative AI-powered models to handle accounting tasks, tax filings, and financial advice, has just raised €800k in pre-seed funding. Mika was supported by founding investors Christian Gaiser, Alexander Lorenz, and Fabian Wittleben.
CuspAI, a transformational AI company building a platform for next-generation materials to tackle global sustainability and clean energy challenges, has secured €28 million in seed funding from Hoxton Ventures, with significant participation from Basis Set Ventures and Lightspeed Venture Partners.
DeepJudge, a Zurich, Switzerland-based AI-driven legal search startup, raised $10.7M in Seed funding led by Coatue, with participation from angel investors Gokul Rajaram and Michele Catasta and existing investors Thomas Dübendorfer, Daniel Sauter, and Felix Ehrat.
Factory, the company that helps organizations automate and optimize their software development lifecycle with autonomous, AI-powered systems, Raises $15M Series A from Sequoia Capital, with participation from Lux Capital and Mantis VC.
Finaloop raises $35 million Series A for e-commerce accounting platform. The Israeli startup’s platform makes all financial data accessible to e-commerce stakeholders, from periodic accounting to real-time finance metrics. The round was led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, with participation from Vesey Ventures, Commerce Ventures, and existing investors, Accel and Aleph
Toronto-based autonomous trucking company Waabi announced this week that it raised $200 million in an oversuscribed Series B funding, led by Uber, Khosla Ventures, and new investors like Nvidia, Porsche, and Volvo Group Venture Capital.
AccountsIQ, a Dublin-founded accounting technology company, has raised €60 million to build “the finance function of the future” led by Axiom Equity.
INOVAIT and Government of Canada invest $10.7M in AI-enhanced image-guided therapy technologies.
M&A 💰
Market intelligence platform AlphaSense is set to acquire Tegus, a provider of corporate intelligence solutions based in Chicago, USA, in a deal totalling $930 million.
Nvidia reportedly acquires incident automation startup Shoreline for $100M. The company provides intelligence automation solutions that are focused on improving the reliability and efficiency of cloud-based services.
Satisfi Labs, an artificial intelligence-powered conversational experience platform for destinations and experiences, has acquired omnichannel marketing automation platform Factoreal.
Digits has recently acquired Basis Finance, a rapidly growing platform specializing in budgeting and forecasting.
Interesting Reads 💡🤔
AI will make money sooner than you’d think, says Cohere CEO Aidan Gomez in a very interesting interview with The Verge.
The article on Creative Bloq highlights the best AI video editing software available in 2024, detailing top choices like Adobe Premiere Pro, DaVinci Resolve Studio, Final Cut Pro, Videoleap, and Invideo AI.
Fort Worth business leaders learn how AI can help companies succeed.
Tech 🤖💻
NVIDIA Releases Open Synthetic Data Generation Pipeline for Training Large Language Models: Nemotron-4 340B includes cutting-edge instruct and reward models, and a dataset for generative AI training.
Anthropic is offering limited access to an experimental Steering API for Claude, allowing adjustment of some of its internal features.
DeepMind, Google’s AI research lab, says it’s developing AI tech to generate soundtracks for videos
Depth Anything V2 is a monocular depth estimation model that uses synthetic images and larger models for faster, more accurate depth predictions.
LARS is an application that enables you to run LLMs locally on your device, upload your own documents and engage in conversations wherein the LLM grounds its responses with your uploaded content.
Tools 🧰🛠️
Prompt: An empty warehouse dynamically transformed by flora that explode from the ground.
RunwayML: Another popular text-to-video tool that has just been released is Gen-3-Alpha, its new AI model which can compete perfectly with OpenAI's Sora."
Dream Machine: Luma Labs AI model that makes high quality, realistic videos fast from text and images.
Pika Labs: The popular text-to-video AI model got a massive upgrade
Jace is an LLM-powered AI agent that can execute in-browser actions on command, founded by former Meta engineers Fryderyk Wiatrowski and Peter Albert.
Freepik Expand: the Spanish startup has just launched a new feature called "expand" that allows users to expand an image and add content using Gen AI.
Wallpaper Al is a high-resolution wallpaper generator that uses AI to create beautiful wallpapers for your smartphone or desktop.
MyAudioJournal is an audio journaling app designed for personal growth.
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.
International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI) (August 3-9) - Jeju-si, South Korea
A prominent event in the field of AI, bringing together researchers and professionals to discuss the latest advancements in artificial intelligence.EAI Africatek - EAI International Conference on Emerging Technologies for Developing Countries (August 6-8) - Ilorin, Nigeria
This conference focuses on sustainable development through the utilization of artificial intelligence and innovative technologies.International Conference on Intelligent Robotics and Control Engineering (August 7-9) - Xi'an, China
Explore advancements in robotics, artificial intelligence, and control engineering.Ai4 2024 (August 12-14) - Las Vegas, NV, USA
The world’s largest gathering of AI business leaders, featuring over 350 speakers and thousands of attendees.Generative AI Summit 2024 (August 13-15) - Sydney, Australia
Australia’s largest event dedicated to generative AI, offering case studies and practical examples on AI implementation.
AI Jobs 👩💻👨💻
AI Manager, (WeHunt) - Valencia (Spain) - Flexible remote Job
Senior Compiler Engineer (NVIDIA) - Spain, remote
Data Scientist, Generative AI (Intrum) . Madrid, Spain
Machine Learning Engineer (DataGrail) - USA, remote - $180,000—$200,000 USD
Staff Machine Learning Engineer (Twilio) - Spain, remote