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| Here's a look at today's AI briefing: - OpenAI CEO is in talks to raise money for a global network of AI chip fabs.
- Rabbit's R1 AI gadget will use Perplexity's AI conversational search engine.
- LLM startup Cohere is in talks to raise up to $1B.
- DeepMind scientists plan to launch an AI venture.
Thanks for reading! Beth
p/beth-duckett | |
| 1 | | OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is raising funds to build a global network of semiconductor factories, targeting billions from investors like G42 and SoftBank, sources told Bloomberg. The venture, focused on chip manufacturing for AI's growing needs, is in the early stages with no full list of partners yet. More: - According to Bloomberg, building these fabs is more costly than the industry norm, but it is driven by Altman's concerns over a future chip shortage for AI.
- The venture would reportedly involve working with undisclosed "top chip manufacturers."
- Discussions have been held with leading chip manufacturers like Intel and TSMC, with Microsoft showing interest.
- Building the network could take years and cost tens of billions. Talks with only G42 seek to raise $8B to $10B, Bloomberg reported.
Zoom out: - The competition to manufacture high-powered chips for advanced AI systems has escalated in the past year.
- In 2023, Nvidia made it into the top five semiconductor companies by annual revenue thanks to a 56% sales boost driven by the AI boom.
- In 2022, NVIDIA ranked 12th in terms of annual revenue. Today, Nvidia stocks reached an all-time high, up nearly 180% over the last year.
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| 2 | | Rabbit's popular R1 AI gadget will use Perplexity AI's large language model to answer user questions and hold conversations. The Rabbit R1 is a pocket-sized AI gadget that's described as a "universal controller" for a user's apps. About the R1: - Perplexity will now provide up-to-date search results for the R1 device, operating alongside Rabbit's "large action model" (LAM).
- The LAM powers the R1's operating system to do tasks like sending messages, booking rides, fact-checking, identifying objects, and finding recipes.
- Designed by Teenage Engineering, the R1 boasts a nearly 3-inch touchscreen, two mics, a speaker, a navigation wheel, a rotational camera, and a "Push-to-Talk" button.
- Rabbit quickly sold out of its first batch of pre-orders earlier this month, with the startup announcing 10,000 units sold in a day.
- The R1 will ship in March or April.
Perplexity: - Perplexity will link Rabbit's R1 with its "real-time search engine," which provides live answers without a knowledge cutoff.
- The first 100,000 Rabbit R1 buyers will get a free year's subscription to Perplexity Pro, which typically costs $20 a month and offers access to GPT-4 and other new LLMs.
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| 3 | | Cohere, a startup specializing in large language models for enterprises, is in talks to raise between $500M and $1B in fresh capital, according to FT. The funding round is expected to boost the company's valuation beyond the $2.2B it reached when it raised $270M last summer. More: - The Toronto-based startup competes against OpenAI and Anthropic, with a specific focus on AI applications for businesses.
- Due to its tighter focus, Cohere has lower development costs for its models, as there aren't millions of consumers using them for free, a source told FT.
- Cohere is raising capital to advance AI development, talent acquisition, and sales growth, according to a Reuters source. The company has steered clear of funding via credits for its cloud usage.
Zoom out: - Cohere's last funding round, in June, included big-name investors such as Nvidia, Oracle, and Salesforce Ventures.
- Gomez, Cohere's CEO, was among the Google researchers to co-author the landmark "Attention Is All You Need" paper introducing the Transformer architecture that powers GPT-4 and other LLMs.
- Founded by Aidan Gomez, Ivan Zhang, and Nick Frosst in 2019, Toronto-based Cohere has raised at least $440M to date.
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| 4 | | Two Google DeepMind scientists plan to launch an AI venture called Holistic in Paris. The startup has been in talks with investors about potentially raising over €200M ($220M) in financing, sources told Bloomberg. More: - While details were limited, the sources said the Holistic startup is likely to focus on developing a new AI model.
- Laurent Sifre, a DeepMind scientist, would reportedly form the company with his DeepMind colleague, Karl Tuyls.
- Both scientists have reportedly given notice to depart from DeepMind, Google's AI research subsidiary.
- Sifre co-authored the 2016 DeepMind research on AI playing Go, while Tuyls has focused on game theory and multi-agent reinforcement learning.
- The startup is not related to London-based Holistic AI, an AI governance, risk, and compliance platform.
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| 5 | | TikTok is testing "AI Song," a tool that generates music from text prompts. According to The Verge, AI Song combines lyrics generated by the Bloom language model with pre-saved music from TikTok's catalog. More: - AI Song is geared toward TikTok users and not professionals in the music industry.
- It generates lyrics based on text prompts, matching the lyrics with pre-saved pop, hip-hop, and EDM tracks, a TikTok spokesperson said.
- After the song is created, users can switch between the different genres to edit the song.
- The feature, which is not technically a true AI song generator, will likely be renamed, the spokesperson said.
- As an experimental feature, it is only available to a limited user group. It's unclear if or when AI Song could launch to a wider user base.
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| 6 | | Weekly roundup — The top AI stories you might have missed this week: - Nearly 40% of the world's jobs are exposed to AI, potentially deepening inequality as the technology both complements and replaces some jobs, according to an International Monetary Fund (IMF) analysis. The organization is urging governments to offer retraining programs and social safety nets to mitigate the effects of AI.
- Samsung revealed its latest flagship Galaxy S24 smartphones, which are equipped with AI tools powered by Google's Gemini models. The AI features include photo editing, live phone call translation, voice recording transcription, web article summarization, and more.
- Microsoft launched a $20-per-month Copilot subscription to consumers, offering AI-powered features within Office apps such as Word, Excel, and Outlook. Microsoft is also making its AI-powered Office features available to all businesses, not just large companies.
- Google DeepMind has created an AI system that can solve geometry problems at the Olympiad level. The "AlphaGeometry" system solved as many geometry problems as an average human International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO) gold medalist, who is typically a high-school mathematician.
- Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg shared an update on the company's AI initiatives today, saying that the long-term goal is to build and open-source artificial general intelligence. Meta is also restructuring its AI efforts, bringing its Fundamental AI Research (FAIR) unit "closer together" with the GenAI research team to advance AI toward more human-like intelligence, he said.
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- During an interview at the World Economic Forum, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said AI and the U.S. are "going to be fine" regardless of the outcome of the upcoming presidential election. When asked if there is a danger that AI will widen social and economic divides, Altman responded, "Yes, for sure," adding that "it is going to become a social issue, a political issue. It already has in some ways."
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 | AI and technology writer | | Beth is a contributing editor and writer of Inside's AI and Tech newsletters. She has written for notable publications like USA Today and the Arizona Business Gazette. During her time as a public policy reporter at The Arizona Republic, she received recognition with a Pulitzer Prize nomination and a First Amendment Award for her collaborative reporting on pension cost increases. Beth also authored a book on the solar photovoltaic industry in 2016. You can reach her at Beth.Duckett@yahoo.com. | | This newsletter was edited by Aaron Crutchfield | |
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