Crypto Surges – Bitcoin broke above $68k against the USD and reached a new ATH against the Euro amid large Spot ETF inflows. Popular meme coins like Shiba Inu also saw large price surges.
Musk v Altman – OpenAI has rejected Elon’s claims that it abandoned its “public benefit” mission by partnering with Microsoft for profit.
India AI Clamp-Down – Major tech firms will have to gain Government approval to launch AI models in India from the Ministry of Electronics and IT.
Apple Fined $2B – The EU fined Apple for thwarting competition from music streaming rivals like Spotify by App Store restrictions in breach of antitrust laws.
Airport Run – California granted Waymo approval to expand its robotaxiservice to areas of LA and San Francisco Peninsula, including the SF airport.
Will Bitcoin continue above its All-Time-High of $69,000
$100k is no problem at this pace
Trend reversal incoming
Dude, I have no idea
The Hottest Thing in Tech this Week
Who will verticalize AI first?
Groq’s Strategic Acquisition
Groq just made a strategic move by acquiring AI software startup Definitive Intelligence. Definitive offers a range of business-oriented AI solutions, including chatbots, data analytics tools and documentation builders. With this acquisition, they have formed GroqCloud, a new business unit to enhance its LPU (“language processing units”) and enterprise and public sector AI ecosystem. Definitive’s CEO will lead GroqCloud to provide infrastructure for its cloud-hosted accelerators and API.
Recently, Groq claimed its LPUs could run existing LLMs like GPT-4 at 10x the speed of current solutions. This development highlights the growing trend towards faster hybrid hardware/software-based custom AI compute solutions for running AI models efficiently. Groq’s CEO predicts that most startups will adopt these high-speed LPUs by end of 2024.
Nvidia’s Four-Layer AI Stack
Nvidia has long had a strategy to power the “next wave of AI,” from “silicon to software” delivering products across a four-layer AI stack:
Hardware,
System software,
Platforms (e.g., simulations like Digital twins)
AI/robotics application frameworks
It reportedly plans to charge $4500/yrper GPU for the software layer to interact with LLMs.
Microsoft’s Research on Micro-Language Models LLMs
New research by Microsoft introduced “The Era of 1-bit LLMs” (i.e., LLMs that are just 1-bit in size). This breakthrough has the potential to disrupt current hardware stacks and enable a “new computation paradigm”. By bringing massive efficiencies to hardware design, 1-bit LLMs could pave the way for smaller, faster, and greener AI models. Microsoft’s partnership with Intel to build hardware optimized for these models further solidifies its position in the AI landscape.
The race is still very much on to solve the problem of lighter, faster, cleaner AI as more and more companies are looking to reduce dependencies and streamline their infrastructure to close the gap on trillion-dollar tech giants.
“The first wave of AI learned perception and inference, the next is robotics — AI planning actions. Digital robots, avatars and physical robots will perceive, plan and act.”
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Founders to Watch and Opportunities to Catch
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Unicorn Founder Launches AI Learning Platform – Orlando, FL – After a season of unicorn growth and strategic M&As, software founder/CTO transitions to next venture to disrupt the education sector. [Four-letter-name].com. Open to follow on investors. Seed Stage.
Democratizing Financial Planning– NYC, NY – VC-backed, “SEC-registered AI RIA” making complex financial planning accessible for underserved. Led by fintech entrepreneurs, post-revenue. Seed Stage. Fintech.
AI-agent for Professional Intros – Irvine, CA – Existing Tech/finance media company looking for growth funding to launch autonomous co-pilot that introduces founders/builders to individuals that can support their growth. Audience of ~600k active members. (Open to financing discussions).
Seeking to partner with 1 Real Estate Developer looking to optimize their workflow – Building an AI Copilot for Parcel Identification. Experienced engineering/cybersecurity team, currently engaged in active DOD contracts. (Stakeholder Equity). Proptech.
Uber for staffing – Cincinnati, OH – $40M ARR technology staffing marketplace specializing in blue collar placements. Raising for tech-optimized M&A of recruiting firm. (Open to financing discussions). Staffing.
Biopharmaceuticals – Massachusetts Oncology Biotech FogPharmaclosed a $145M Series E led by Nextech Invest with RA Capital and General Catalyst.
AI Deployment – San Fran startup Baseten raised a $40M Series B led by IVP and Spark Capital to help devs build and deploy AI applications.
Auction-Powered Ads – Palo Alto e-commerce startup Topsort, raised a $20M Series A at a $150M post-money valuation.
Scaling Ethereum – New York Layer 2 scaling solutions startup Taikoclosed its Series A at $15M backed by Lightspeed Faction, and Hashed.
With Relish – Ohio startup Relish uses AI to help businesses improve customer interactions by analyzing customer data, and just closed a $10M Series A.
Companies to Watch:
Going Large – Microsoft invested a further $16.3M in an add-on to Mistral AI’s Series A as part of an Azure distribution partnership for its “Mistral large”.
The Funding Buzz
Venx – A Boston collaborative group will co-evaluate investments and write checks individually focused on pre-seed to later stages in deep tech, including climate tech, AI and biotech.
Commerce Ventures – San Francisco firm investing in seed and Series A fintech, payments, insurance, and retail tech startups closed its fifth fund at more than $150M.
Startup Qatar Investment Program – QDB-managed $100M fund to attract tech startups to Qatar, including in fintech, clean tech, agritech, B2B SaaS, health tech, marketplaces, proptech, AI & ML and robotics.
