xAI seeks $6B at $18B valuation / AI venture funding ticks up in Q1 / FT to license stories to OpenAI

Plus: Apple's upcoming iPad Pro model could be its 'first truly AI-powered device.'

Inside AI

For April 29, 2024

Here’s a look at today's AI briefing:

xAI seeks to raise up to $6B at $18B valuation.
Apple's upcoming iPad Pro could be its 'first truly AI-powered device.'
AI venture funding ticks up in Q1 over prior quarter.
Financial Times to license stories to OpenAI.
GitHub previews Copilot Workspace.

Elon Musk's xAI Corp. is reportedly close to raising $6B in funding, potentially valuing the AI company at $18B. The deal, offering investors a quarter of the firm, is likely to be finalized in the coming weeks unless terms change.

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Silicon Valley VC giant Sequoia Capital has committed to investing in the startup.
Future Ventures, Valor Equity Partners, and Gigafund could also participate.
Musk is said to be pitching xAI as a brand to "connect the digital and physical worlds" and integrate with his other companies like X, Tesla, Neuralink, and SpaceX.
xAI will use data from Musk's enterprises to advance Tesla's self-driving cars and its Optimus robot.

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Musk launched xAI last year "to understand the true nature of the universe."
It later released its AI model Grok, a "witty and rebellious" chatbot.
The fresh funding will help boost the development of Grok to better compete with rivals like OpenAI.

Apple is expected to unveil an iPad Pro with an M4 chip at an event on May 7. Bloomberg's Mark Gurman believes Apple will market the new iPad Pro as "its first truly AI-powered device."

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The tablet could be the first Apple device to feature the next-generation M4 chip, which can power on-device AI features.
He expects the M4 chip to contain an upgraded Neural Engine, improving AI task performance.
After the tablet's launch, Gurman predicts Apple will market all future products as AI devices.

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Apple will also update its entire Mac line with new M4 processors focused on AI capabilities
The chip could arrive in new iMacs, Mac minis, high-end 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pros, and a low-end 14-inch MacBook Pro starting late this year through early next year.

Venture funding for AI startups rose in Q1 2024 from the previous quarter, though it fell 25% year-over-year, per Crunchbase data. Notably, Q1 2023 featured OpenAI's record $10B funding from Microsoft.

What the numbers show: Despite expectations of a slowdown, Crunchbase reports that AI funding rose slightly in Q1 2024 with $12.2B invested across 1,166 deals — a 4% rise from the $11.7B across 1,072 deals during the prior quarter.

Zoom in: Last quarter still saw a decline in mega-rounds for AI funding, with only one round surpassing $1B and two others above $320M. Q1's top fundraises included China's Moonshot AI with over $1B, U.S. robotics startup Figure raising $675M, and Chinese AI startup MiniMax's $600M round.

The bigger picture: According to PitchBook, investors have committed $330B in roughly 26,000 AI and ML startups over the last three years, a two-thirds increase from the funding across 20,350 AI companies between 2018 and 2020.

British newspaper the Financial Times (FT) will license its news stories to OpenAI for AI training. The companies also will partner to create new AI products and features for FT's readers.

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FT said it's already a customer of ChatGPT Enterprise.
ChatGPT will credit and link to FT when using its stories in responses.
"It is right, of course, that AI platforms pay publishers for the use of their material," said FT CEO John Ridding
Financial terms of the deal weren't disclosed.

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OpenAI has similar agreements with other news organizations, including Axel Springer and The Associated Press.
In December, The New York Times sued OpenAI and Microsoft alleging copyright infringement, accusing them of using its content without permission.

GitHub announced Copilot Workspace for end-to-end coding help. Developers to manage tasks from brainstorming to running code using natural language. The AI-powered developer environment is now in a technical preview.

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The platform offers Copilot-powered agents throughout the entire lifecycle development process.
Workspace integrates with GitHub repositories, allowing developers to guide project tasks through prompts,
The Verge notes that starting a project with Copilot allows developers to spend less time reading code and documentation.
Once a project is started, Workspace provides an editable plan for developers with steps to reach their goals.
Workspace debuts in preview for waitlisted developers, with future integration planned with the broader GitHub Copilot platform.

AI Events and Conferences:

Rise of AI Conference: May 14-15, Berlin, Germany, and virtual.
Generative AI Summit London: May 20-22, London, U.K.
Enterprise Generative AI Summit West Coast: May 21-22, Silicon Valley, California.
AI Expo Tokyo: May 22-24, Tokyo, Japan.
AI World Congress 2024: May 30-31, London, U.K.
Data Cloud Summit 2024: June 3-6, San Francisco.
AI and Big Data Expo North America: June 5-6, Santa Clara, California.
SuperAI: June 5-6, Singapore.
The AI Summit London: June 12-13, London, U.K.
2024 IEEE Conference on Artificial Intelligence: June 25-27, Singapore.
Ai4 2024: Aug. 12-14, Las Vegas, Nevada.
The AI Conference: Sept. 18-19, San Francisco.
AI Summit Seoul: Dec. 10-11, Seoul, South Korea.

QUICK HITS:

ChatGPT's paid subscribers can now access its Memory feature that remembers user preferences.
NIST launched a GenAI program to evaluate generative AI technologies. The U.S. agency will release benchmarks and help create "deepfake-checking" systems.
Tesla received approval from Chinese authorities for data security, potentially clearing the way to offer its most advanced self-driving software in China.
Google has laid off an undisclosed number of employees from its Python team. The move comes two weeks after Google restructured its finance division, including layoffs, as it prioritizes investments in AI.

Beth Duckett

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.