OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is offering his personal capital to startups affected by Friday's collapse of Silicon Valley Bank. Altman extended six figures worth of emergency funds to the radiology automation startup Rad AI, which needed the funds to pay its employees. More: - Altman offered the funds to Rad AI CEO Doktor Gurson within two hours of the request, noting that Gurson could pay him back only when he can.
- "The crazy thing here is he's not an investor in our company," Gurson said. "He didn't ask for anything."
- Altman, the former CEO of Y Combinator, told Reuters, "I remember the investors who helped me out when I was running a startup and I really needed it, and I always try to pay it forward."
- Altman also tweeted to his followers on Friday, "Today is a good day to offer emergency cash to your startups that need it for payroll or whatever. No docs, no terms, just send money."
Zoom out: - Regulators seized Silicon Valley Bank and placed it into receivership on Friday, marking the largest U.S. bank failure since 2008 and the second largest in U.S. history.
- Regulators have since announced that all Silicon Valley Bank's depositors, including those not insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC), will have access to their money as of today, March 13.
- The takeover occurred a day after the bank's customers attempted to withdraw $42B in a single day.
- Nearly half of U.S. venture capital-backed startups have used the tech-focused lender. Many startups had their capital held in SVB, and some were scrambling to raise emergency funds from VCs to meet payroll and operational cash requirements.
VENTUREBEAT | |
Microsoft dedicated hundreds of millions of dollars toward building a supercomputer to power OpenAI projects such as ChatGPT, according to Bloomberg. The supercomputer linked tens of thousands of Nvidia A100 graphics cards on Microsoft Azure to enable OpenAI to train its AI models. More: - The system architecture was reliable and operational "at a very large scale," resulting in ChatGPT and other AI models, said Nidhi Chappell, Microsoft general manager of Azure AI infrastructure.
- While ChatGPT may be the most well-known model to come from the system, the supercomputer was built to be generalized for anyone to train large language models, according to Microsoft EVP Scott Guthrie.
- Overall, the project cost several hundred million dollars. So far, Microsoft has dedicated over $13B in total investments into OpenAI, including a $10B investment announced in January.
- Since 2019, Microsoft has been the exclusive cloud partner for OpenAI, and its Azure-powered supercomputing system has been used to train all of OpenAI's machine-learning and AI models.
- According to Guthrie, Microsoft is now working on a next-generation supercomputer that "is much bigger and will enable even more sophistication."
Related: - Meanwhile, Microsoft is hosting an event, "The Future of Work: Reinventing Productivity with AI," this Thursday, March 16.
- The hosts, CEO Satya Nadella and Microsoft 365 lead Jared Spataro, are expected to show viewers "how AI will power a whole new way of working for every person and organization."
- The live stream will begin at 8 a.m. PT/11 a.m. ET.
- Relatedly, Microsoft recently announced a "Copilot" version of its Dynamics 365 business management platform, which aims to automate some customer service, marketing, and sales tasks.
- Dynamics 365 Copilot, described as an AI assistant, incorporates OpenAI technology to automate tasks, such as writing email responses, drafting chat and email answers, and producing email summaries or Teams meetings in Outlook.
BLOOMBERG | |
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The Mauritshuis museum in the Netherlands has been criticized for featuring an AI-created image inspired by Johannes Vermeer's "Girl with a Pearl Earring." Berlin-based digital artist Julian van Dieken said he used the Midjourney AI tool and Photoshop to create his work, "A Girl With Glowing Earrings," which pays homage to the original. More: - Van Dieken's work was one of five artworks chosen as part of a museum contest that saw nearly 3,500 submissions.
- The contest, called "My Girl With a Pearl," called on artists to reimage Vermeer's 1665 painting while the original is on loan at Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum, the national museum of the Netherlands.
- Van Dieken said he was transparent about his use of AI in the submissions, reflecting on how AI tools may alter creative processes.
- However, his AI-generated work has drawn criticism from some in the art world. Dutch artist Iris Compiet called the selection "an insult to the legacy of Vermeer and also to any working artist. Coming from a museum, it's a real slap in the face."
- A Mauritshuis spokesperson said it is "not the museum to discuss if AI belongs in an art museum."
THE ART NEWSPAPER | |
Chilean food tech company NotCo has hired former Activision Blizzard CMO Fernando Machado as its chief marketing officer. NotCo is known for its patented AI algorithm, Guiseppe, that processes data to help generate new plant-based food combinations. More: - NotCo, South America's fastest-growing food tech firm, has used AI to help create its plant-based meat and dairy alternatives, such as Not Mayo, NotMilk, NotBurgers, and NotChicken.
- It also licenses its AI tech for other manufacturers to produce their own plant-based products, including Shake Shack's dairy-free custards and shakes.
- Machado will now work on a marketing plan to expand NotCo into the U.S., according to CEO and co-founder Matias Muchnick. The company also plans to incorporate AI tools into its marketing efforts.
- Prior to NotCo, Machado served as CMO of Activision Blizzard starting in April 2021 and was formerly the CMO at Restaurant Brands International (RBI), the parent of Burger King, Popeyes, and others.
- NotCo was last valued at $1.5B in December 2022 in a $70M series D extension funding round.
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL | |
AI Events and Conferences: - ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction: March 13-16, Stockholm, Sweden.
- The European Chatbot & Conversational AI Summit: March 15-16, Edinburgh, U.K., and online.
- Data Innovation Summit ANZ edition: March 16, Melbourne, Australia.
- Memory Con: March 28-29, Mountain View, California.
- AI World Congress 2023: June 7-8, London.
- Big Data and Analytics Summit Canada: June 13-14, Toronto.
- Ai4 2023: Aug. 7-9, Las Vegas, Nevada.
- AI Hardware Summit: Sept. 12-14, Santa Clara, California.
- Edge AI Summit: Sept.12-14, Santa Clara, California.
- AI & Big Data Expo Global 2023: Nov. 30-Dec. 1, Olympia, London.
- The AI Summit New York: Dec. 6-7, New York City.
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- Seventy of the 650+ sessions at next week's Nvidia GTC online event will cover generative AI, according to Nvidia marketing VP Greg Estes. The online event runs from March 20 to 23.
- Ghost kitchen operator NextGen Food Robotics Corp. is now working on an AI-powered mobile app for online food ordering. Called "Lilly," the app will include a natural language processing chat interface that makes food suggestions to users.
- Storied, a family history platform, announced the launch of an online family history story generator powered by AI. Users enter written details and the AI engine generates a draft story for editing and publishing.
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Upcoming Events: - March 14 - Inside Startups Coffee Break (Register Here)
- March 15 - Monthly Meditation guided by Nicholas Whitaker (Register Here)
- March 20 - Inside Interview with Rollworks - Clearing the Path to ABM Success: Addressing the Issues Holding You Back (Register Here)
- March 27 - Insider Interview with Zscaler - Zero Trust Defense Strategies to Take Your Security to the Next Level (Watch On Demand)
- April 18 - Human Resources Summit'23 (Register Here)
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| | Beth is a writer and editor at Inside.com covering artificial intelligence and daily technology news. She has written the Inside AI newsletter since 2019. You can reach her at Beth.Duckett@inside.com. | | | 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 and 1972 Fords. | |
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