 SoftBank Group Corp. invested $146M in AI money management firm company Qraft Technologies. The Seoul-based fintech firm plans to grow its sales teams and expand further in the U.S. and other markets. More: - Qraft developed an AI-investing engine that analyzes market data for investments.
- Its NYSE-listed ETFs are actively managed by AI technology.
- The startup says its deep learning algorithms "provide portfolio weight signals which can be alpha-generative."
- Its U.S. CEO, Robert Nestor, is a former BlackRock Inc. and Vanguard Group executive.
- With the latest investment, Qraft will pursue AI-powered public portfolio management systems for SoftBank.
- Qraft plans to hire for and open new offices in New York, San Francisco, and Hong Kong.
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL 
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The FBI has contracted with Clearview AI to continue using its facial recognition services, according to CyberScoop. Federal law enforcement agencies have awarded 20+ contracts related to facial recognition since June, according to the publication. More: - One of those agencies is U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which has contracted with both Trust Stamp and Clearview for facial recognition services.
- Under the Biden administration, ICE's investment in Clearview has more than doubled. In September, ICE awarded a $500,000 contract to Clearview worth up to $1.5M over three years.
- Buzzfeed compiled an online searchable database showing how many times workers at U.S. taxpayer-funded agencies have used Clearview's tool.
- Meanwhile, the Government Accountability Office criticized the federal government for its lack of accountability in using facial recognition technology in a 2021 report.
- The GAO found that 14 government agencies used technologies provided by private companies like Clearview and Amazon.
- Most of them did not track what non-federal systems are used by employees.
CYBERSCOOP
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 LabelBox co-founders Manu Sharma and Brian Rieger. Labelbox, an AI training data platform for businesses, announced a $110M funding round at a roughly $1B valuation, co-founder and CEO Manu Sharma said. The Series D was led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2, with participation from Snowpoint Ventures and Databricks Ventures and previous investors B Capital Group, Andreessen Horowitz, and ARK Invest CEO Catherine Wood. More: - Labelbox sells a software platform with tools to label data, train and test AI models, conduct error analyses, and more for enterprise ML applications.
- The platform acts as central command for data scientists to collaborate with teams that label data to create training data for AI models.
- The company optimizes data with a focus on increasing efficiency over time, said Labelbox co-founder and President Brian Rieger.
- The new capital will go toward product development and distribution.
- Labelbox's chief competitor is Amazon's SageMaker. The startup now claims ~200 customers, including NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab and Allstate. It has a net retention rate of greater than 150%.
- It has raised $189M since its 2018 inception.
AITHORITY
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 Daimler Truck subsidiary Torc Robotics will open an engineering hub in Austin, Texas, to further develop and test its self-driving truck technology. The company is seeking to commercialize Level 4 autonomous trucks at scale by 2030. More: - The 21,000-square-foot office will house mostly software development teams, including new hires, when it opens in early 2022.
- The company is growing its product management and autonomy, systems, and infrastructure teams.
- In the future, Torc plans to test autonomous trucks in the region.
- The company already has a testing center in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and headquarters in Blacksburg, Virginia.
- In 2019, Daimler Truck acquired a majority share in Torc, which operates as an independent subsidiary.
Texas' growing tech hub: - Facebook parent Meta has leased office space in what is set to become the tallest skyscraper in downtown Austin.
- Last month, Tesla officially relocated its HQ to Austin from Palo Alto, California.
- Oracle Corp. moved to Austin from Silicon Valley in 2020.
- Samsung's planned chip-making factory near Austin is expected to start production in 2024.
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Alphabet plans to spin out Sandbox, its secretive division exploring technologies at "the intersection of physics and artificial intelligence." The unit is largely made up of former employees from Alphabet's R&D X Development LLC, formerly Google X. More: - Google co-founder Sergei Brin founded Sandbox@Alphabet to focus on experimental and software quantum projects.
- The division will reportedly be spun off soon as an independent company and led by its current boss, director Jack Hidary.
- Hidary recently submitted a filing to form the new company, SB Technologies, that's based in San Francisco.
- Hidary, a tech entrepreneur and former Samba Energy chairman, authored the book "Quantum Computing: An Applied Approach."
- Sandbox is independent of Google's Quantum AI team based in Santa Barbara, California.
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- Pennsylvania lawmakers introduced a bill that would allow the testing of L 3-5 autonomous vehicles on state roads.
- SambaNova Systems has no plans to go public in the near term, according to co-founder Rodrigo Liang. The AI software and hardware builder was last valued at $5B+ in April.
- DataOps software startup Timeseer.AI, an AI time-series data observability platform, raised $6M.
- The AI/Tech + Aging Collective announced the a2 Pilot Awards, a competition awarding $40M over five years to AI projects that support people with Alzheimer's and related dementias.
- The worldwide market for AI in the supply chain is projected to reach $14.3B in 2028, up from $4.8B in 2020.
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 |  | Beth is an Inside Analyst and a former public policy/investigative reporter. She has covered AI, VR, technology, and e-commerce for Inside. When she's not busy writing, she's hiking in Arizona's desert, playing pickleball, or trying out new Mexican food recipes. |   | | Editor | Aaron Crutchfield is based in the high desert of California. Over the last two decades, he has spent time writing and editing at various local newspapers and defense contractors in California. When he's not working, he can often be found looking at the latest memes with his kids or working on his 1962 Ford. | |
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