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| Here's a look at today's AI briefing: - Amazon invests $2.75B in Anthropic.
- Samsung to bring AI features to more smartphones.
- Databricks releases open source large language model.
- Celestial AI raises $175M.
Beth
p/beth-duckett | |
| 1 | | Amazon said it will invest a further $2.75B into Anthropic, adding to its initial $1.25B investment in the startup from last September. The latest tranche completes Amazon's pledge to invest up to $4B in Anthropic, a competitor to OpenAI and Google, known for its Claude models. More: - As part of the deal, Anthropic named Amazon Web Services its primary cloud provider.
- Additionally, Anthropic plans to use AWS data centers and chips for some of its operations and give AWS customers access to its future foundation AI models.
- Anthropic's latest AI models, known as the Claude 3 series, are now available through Amazon Bedrock, AWS's fully managed service.
- The models, which compete with OpenAI's GPT series, can both generate text and analyze images.
Zoom out: - Anthropic, founded in 2021 by ex-OpenAI employees Daniela and Dario Amodei, has raised over $10B in the last year from Amazon, Google, Salesforce, and others.
- Google agreed to invest $2B in Anthropic last October following an earlier $550M in funding that year.
- Anthropic also counts Google as a cloud computing partner.
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| 2 | | Samsung is bringing its suite of AI-powered features to more smartphones. The capabilities, including chat assistance and live translation of phone calls, will roll out to the Galaxy S23 lineup and more in a software update on Thursday. More: - The Gemini-powered features, dubbed Galaxy AI, were previously only available on Samsung's new Galaxy S24 phone series.
- In addition to expanding it to the older S23 lineup, the features will launch on the Galaxy S23 FE, Galaxy Z Fold 5, Galaxy Z Flip 5, and Galaxy Tab S9.
- They include Circle to Search, where users can Google search for an item by circling it on the screen, and Chat Assist, which rewrites texts and translates conversations.
- Live Translate offers real-time phone call translation, while Generative Edit allows object manipulation or removal in photos.
Zoom out: - Samsung aims to bring the features to more than 100 million Galaxy users this year, according to president T.M. Roh.
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| 3 | | Databricks released a new open-source large language model that it says outperforms competitors from xAI, Meta, and Mistral. Databricks' DBRX model also nears the capabilities of OpenAI's GPT-4 in language comprehension, math, and programming tasks, according to reports. 
What happened: Databricks introduced DBRX today. The open-source generative AI model similar to OpenAI's GPT and Google's Gemini is available for research and commercial use on GitHub and the Hugging Face. What it is: DBRX employs a mixture of experts (MoE) architecture for faster data processing, breaking tasks into subtasks and assigning them to smaller, specialized models. Databricks trained DBRX for two months on NVIDIA DGX Cloud, for a total cost of $10M. What the numbers show: According to Databricks, DBRX surpasses other "open source" models across industry benchmarks in language understanding, programming, and math. Its inference speeds are twice as fast as Meta's LLaMA2-70B model. When compared to Grok-1 from Elon Musk's xAI, DBRX is about 40% smaller in size. Still: Unless you're a Databricks customer, using DBRX is challenging because it requires a server or PC with at least four Nvidia H100 GPUs, which can cost upwards of $40,000 each. Databricks is also imposing "certain restrictions" on companies with more than 700 million active users, according to TechCrunch. Zoom out: Databricks gained recognition for its cloud-based data processing software but has ventured further into AI. Last year, the company introduced LakehouseIQ, an AI assistant that understands natural language queries, and acquired generative AI startup MosaicML for $1.3B. In September, Databricks became the world's eighth most valuable private company when it secured $500M in a funding round, valuing the company at $43B. | | | |
| 4 | | Celestial AI, a startup providing scalable memory and compute resources to develop AI models, raised a $175M Series C round led by Thomas Tull's U.S. Innovative Technology Fund. Celestial's semiconductor technology offers a faster and more efficient approach to designing AI infrastructure. More: - Its technology boosts bandwidth and memory capacity while reducing lag and power consumption, accelerating and improving the energy efficiency of AI computing tasks.
- Celestial's customers, including Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, and Google, use the company's technology in their data centers.
- Its "Photonic Fabric" transports data as light instead of electricity, boosting memory bandwidth and capacity by a factor of up to 25 while slashing power consumption.
- The startup claims the interconnect can link AI chips with up to tens of terabytes of memory, surpassing the onboard memory capacity of the most advanced GPUs, which typically have less than one terabyte of HBM3 memory.
Fresh funding: - Other investors in its latest round included AMD Ventures, Koch Disruptive Technologies, Temasek, Temasek's Xora Innovation fund, IAG Capital Partners, Samsung Catalyst, and others.
- Celestial also secured $100M in Series B funding last June led by IAG Capital Partners, Koch Disruptive Technologies, and Temasek's Xora Innovation Fund.
- Founded in 2020, the Santa Clara-based startup has raised almost $340M to date.
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| 5 | | Microsoft's "requirements for an AI PC" include having a dedicated Copilot key and new NPU, CPU, and GPU-powered silicon, according to Intel. Vendors need to have these components in order to advertise their new machines as "AI PCs." More: - For its "AI PC" vision, Microsoft is seeking a combination of hardware and software from OEM partners like Intel.
- In addition to the hardware, Microsoft wants AI PCs to include access to its Copilot AI assistant, which is already built into Windows 11.
- The PCs will also need to have keyboards with the Copilot key, which summons Microsoft's AI-powered assistant with a click.
- Microsoft hasn't said what OEMs specifically gain with the branding.
- The company recently labeled its new Surface Pro 10 and Surface Laptop 6 for businesses as its first AI PCs.
Zoom out: - Intel shared its own AI PC concept late last year with the launch of its Core Ultra processors, which have a built-in neural processing unit (NPU) to run AI programs faster.
- The company also forecasts that AI-powered PCs will make up 80% of PC sales by 2028.
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| 6 | | 🍋 FRESH FUNDING 🍋 - Enterprise-focused AI model developer Cohere is looking to raise $500M in fresh funding at a valuation of $5B, sources informed Reuters. The target valuation is more than double compared to Cohere's previous valuation of $2.2B from last June, when it raised a $270M round from Inovia Capital, Nvidia, and Oracle.
- Cloud-based AI-powered accounting platform developer FundGuard secured $100M in Series C funding led by Key1 Capital fund. Euclidean Capital and Hamilton Lane participated in the round along with existing strategic investor State Street.
- AI-based avatar and voice generation platform HeyGen is set to raise $60M in a new funding round reportedly being led by Benchmark. The firm had a pre-money valuation of $440M, six times higher than its valuation four months ago.
- Sanbanci Climate Ventures joined enterprise SaaS startup AiDash's $50M Series C funding round as a strategic investor. Other investors participating in the round include Duke Energy, Lightrock SE Ventures, G2 Venture Partners, Benhamou Global Ventures, Edison International, and Shell Ventures.
For the latest on AI startup funding and more in the VC community, subscribe to our Inside Venture Capital newsletter. | | | |
| 7 | | QUICK HITS - Pattern released a 30-page insights report for beauty brands selling on Amazon.*
- A video statement from Catherine, Princess of Wales about her recent cancer diagnosis was not generated by AI, according to deepfake experts and Kensington Palace.
- Nvidia's Hopper H200 GPU paired with its advanced TensorRT LLM set a new record in MLPerf benchmarks for performance.
- Three blockchain AI companies — SingularityNET, Fetch.ai, and Ocean Protocol — are considering merging their crypto tokens to form an ASI token worth $7.5B.
- Nearly 8 million jobs in the U.K. are at risk of being replaced by AI, with entry-level, part-time, and administrative roles the most vulnerable, according to an Institute for Public Policy Research report.
- Google is rolling out new translation features and AI-driven trip itineraries in Search, as well as curated recommendations for places to visit in Maps.
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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 publications including USA Today, the Arizona Business Gazette, and The Arizona Republic, where she received recognition with a Pulitzer Prize nomination and a First Amendment Award for collaborative reporting on state pension cost increases. You can reach her at Beth.Duckett@yahoo.com. | | This newsletter was edited by Beth Duckett | |
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