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Recent Editions

John Giannandrea. Photo via YouTube/TechCrunch.

Apple Enters the AI Race, Boosting Google in the Process

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Sep 7, 2023 7:00am PDT

In the race to win the large-language model race, one big tech name has not surfaced as a contestant: Apple. Until now.My colleague Wayne Ma reported on Wednesday that Apple created a team four years ago, long before the current generative AI hype cycle, to develop large-language models. In other words, Apple may not be as much of an LLM laggard... In the race to win the large-language model race, one big tech name has not surfaced as a...

Generated by Pika Labs.

A Rival to Runway Emerges; Meta’s AI Drama; A Robotics Vet Becomes a VC

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Sep 6, 2023 7:00am PDT

In the past two months, the number of people using a Discord server dubbed Pika has quietly grown from zero to more than 160,000. Thousands of users post requests such as, “a sleek, electric car silently glides across the screen against a backdrop of futuristic cityscapes” and “clouds move with breeze.” The server spits back three-second... In the past two months, the number of people using a Discord server dubbed Pika has quietly grown...

Chart by Shane Burke.

What We Can Learn From AI Startups in Y Combinator’s Latest Batch

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Sep 5, 2023 7:01am PDT

Tomorrow, dozens of startups will take to the virtual stage to pitch their ideas as part of Y Combinator’s iconic Demo Day, though some well-known investors have already gotten an early look at them. This year, more than 60% of the group—or 134 startups—are building applications or tools around artificial intelligence, mostly related to... Tomorrow, dozens of startups will take to the virtual stage to pitch their ideas as part of Y...

Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce. Photo by Getty.

Salesforce Shows Incumbents’ Power in AI Race

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Aug 31, 2023 7:00am PDT

Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce. Photo by Getty.

Salesforce Shows Incumbents’ Power in AI Race

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Aug 31, 2023 7:00am PDT

In a year that’s seen one out of every four dollars of venture funding go to an artificial intelligence startup, a historically un-sexy breed of investor has dominated the field: corporations.And not just the tech behemoths. It’s no secret that Microsoft, Google, Nvidia and Oracle have collectively invested billions of dollars into AI startups... In a year that’s seen one out of every four dollars of venture funding go to an artificial...

Thomas Kurian. Photo via Google Cloud.

Why Google Still Needs Nvidia; The AWS-OpenAI Marriage That Could Have Been

By Jon Victor · Aug 30, 2023 7:00am PDT

Google unveiled its next-generation artificial intelligence chip at its annual enterprise software conference, Google Cloud Next, on Tuesday. But it still felt the need to tout a different kind of win: a partnership with Nvidia to offer that company’s state-of-the-art AI chips through Google Cloud alongside its own hardware. Nvidia CEO Jensen... Google unveiled its next-generation artificial intelligence chip at its annual enterprise...

Photo by Midjourney.

WTF is RAG? It Could Solve LLMs’ Biggest Weaknesses

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Aug 29, 2023 7:40am PDT

You may have noticed artificial intelligence researchers have a gift for coming up with new acronyms seemingly every week. We’re sorry to inform you of another one you need to remember: RAG, which stands for retrieval augmented generation.It’s a method to help AI software such as chatbots answer questions about information they’ve never seen... You may have noticed artificial intelligence researchers have a gift for coming up with new...

Photo by Midjourney.

A Sequoia Capital-Backed AI-Video Startup Raises Nearly $20 Million; Eight Startups Taking on Nvidia

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Aug 28, 2023 7:00am PDT

We’re starting the new week with fundraising news about a fast-evolving part of generative artificial intelligence: video.Tavus, a two-year-old startup whose software helps companies customize videos they can then send to prospective customers, job candidates and others, has raised about $18 million in Series A funding at a $80 million... We’re starting the new week with fundraising news about a fast-evolving part of generative...

Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia. Photo via Shutterstock.

Five Takeaways From Nvidia’s Earnings Call

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Aug 24, 2023 7:00am PDT

Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia. Photo via Shutterstock.

Five Takeaways From Nvidia’s Earnings Call

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Aug 24, 2023 7:00am PDT

Nvidia stock is trading up Thursday morning, as investors applaud Wednesday evening’s blowout quarterly earnings report. Of course, that quarter is history now: what’s more important is what comes next. On that subject, CEO Jensen Huang was less than illuminating on Wednesday’s call. Nevertheless, we learned a lot from listening to comments from... Nvidia stock is trading up Thursday morning, as investors applaud Wednesday evening’s blowout...

Anna Bofa, founder and CEO of Crate. Photo via Crate.

Ex-Pinterest Staffer Launches AI App to Beat Pinterest, Raises $5 Million

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Aug 23, 2023 7:00am PDT

A smattering of artificial intelligence apps have emerged recently to help consumers organize their lives. Some, like Rewind, help people keep track of all their digital activity so they can always remember what happened in the past. Others, such as HyperWrite, aid users with tedious web tasks like booking restaurant reservations or flights.The... A smattering of artificial intelligence apps have emerged recently to help consumers organize...

Photo via Midjourney.

Why Midjourney and Runway Are Suddenly on Shaky Ground; Nvidia’s Upcoming Blowout

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Aug 22, 2023 7:16am PDT · 1 comment

A recent court ruling may put rocket-ship AI startups like Midjourney and Runway on shaky ground.United States District Court Judge Beryl A. Howell ruled on Friday that art completely generated by artificial intelligence cannot be copyrighted, the latest update in a string of controversies surrounding the technology’s usage in art. The ruling... A recent court ruling may put rocket-ship AI startups like Midjourney and Runway on shaky ground....

Photo via Getty

Beware of Fear-Mongering in AI Regulation; Meta Scores Another Point for Open-Source

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Aug 21, 2023 7:00am PDT

It’s no secret politicians are worried about artificial intelligence. And while AI executives suggest they’re just as concerned, they may have another agenda in creating that perception.Recent proposed federal legislation with cheery names like the “Block Nuclear Launch by Autonomous Artificial Intelligence Act of 2023” or the “Artificial... It’s no secret politicians are worried about artificial intelligence. And while AI executives...

Photos courtesy of Llion Jones and David Ha.

A Godfather of Transformers Launches Lab Developing More Adaptable AI Models; Databricks and OpenAI in Dealmaking Mode

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Aug 17, 2023 7:00am PDT

Photos courtesy of Llion Jones and David Ha.

A Godfather of Transformers Launches Lab Developing More Adaptable AI Models; Databricks and OpenAI in Dealmaking Mode

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Aug 17, 2023 7:00am PDT

Much to the dismay of antsy bankers and investors, it doesn’t look like Databricks, which has aided the rise of artificial intelligence software in the business world, will be going public anytime soon.Instead, the company, which sells tools for building machine-learning models, has been chatting with investors about potentially raising hundreds... Much to the dismay of antsy bankers and investors, it doesn’t look like Databricks, which has...

Chart by Shane Burke.

How Eight AI Coding Assistants Stack Up

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Aug 16, 2023 7:00am PDT · 2 comments

Hello!One of the earliest companies to commercialize generative AI was GitHub, the Microsoft-owned code repository, which released its AI coding assistant Copilot under preview in June 2021. Powered by OpenAI’s technology, the assistant quickly captured the hearts of developers by giving them a tool that suggests code fragments while they type,... Hello!One of the earliest companies to commercialize generative AI was GitHub, the Microsoft...

Photo via Midjourney.

Google Gemini’s Strength May Be Its Greatest Weakness; Don’t Hop on the AI Hiring Train

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Aug 15, 2023 7:00am PDT · 2 comments

Historically (and much to the dismay of people born in May and June), the word “Gemini” has been associated with being “two-faced” or having dual personalities. So it’s somewhat fitting, then, that Google’s upcoming collection of large machine-learning models using that name was born out of the forced marriage of two AI teams, Google... Historically (and much to the dismay of people born in May and June), the word “Gemini” has been...

Left: Aidan Gomez, CEO of Cohere. Photo via Cohere. Right: Edo Liberty, CEO of Pinecone. Photo via Pinecone.

Pinecone and Cohere CEOs Warn About Leaving the GPU ‘Faucet’ Running in the Age of AI

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Aug 14, 2023 7:00am PDT · 2 comments

You know those horror stories of people who leave a faucet running in their house while on vacation for a week, returning to a flooded residence? That kind of thing is happening in AI.Edo Liberty, founder of Pinecone, a buzzy infrastructure startup which helps developers build AI applications using their own data, says he heard about an intern... You know those horror stories of people who leave a faucet running in their house while on...

Art by Shane Burke.

Revenue Is a Dirty Word in the Land of AI; Biden Takes a Swing at China

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Aug 10, 2023 7:00am PDT

Art by Shane Burke.

Revenue Is a Dirty Word in the Land of AI; Biden Takes a Swing at China

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Aug 10, 2023 7:00am PDT

It’s been a tough year for tech startups. In the midst of down rounds and deep layoffs, tech CEOs and VCs have been careful to emphasize profitability and strong financials above all else. Except, that is, for startups having anything to do with generative AI. The most recent example, as my colleagues Natasha Mascarenhas, Erin Woo and I ... It’s been a tough year for tech startups. In the midst of down rounds and deep layoffs, tech CEOs...

Art generated by Midjourney.

Author Paranoia About AI Finds New Targets

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Aug 9, 2023 7:00am PDT · 1 comment

AI founders need to watch out. It’s no secret that publishers and writers are sensitive about large-language models using their data for training. But just how sensitive became clear in the recent shuttering of a six-year-old publishing dataset called Prosecraft.The service, created in 2017 by Benji Smith, founder and CEO at word processor ... AI founders need to watch out. It’s no secret that publishers and writers are sensitive about...

Chart by Shane Burke.

OpenAI Quietly Releases Web Crawler; ChatGPT Flounders, Bard Flourishes in Latest Usage Data

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Aug 8, 2023 7:30am PDT · 5 comments

One of the biggest complaints that ChatGPT users have is the lack of up-to-date information from the web in its models and chatbot. OpenAI’s announcement on Monday night of GPTBot, a web crawler that scrapes sites for data that may be used to improve its future models, could be the company’s answer.It might not be a coincidence that the... One of the biggest complaints that ChatGPT users have is the lack of up-to-date information from...

Photo via Midjourney.

Hype About AI ‘Agents’ Rises Again; Why GPUs Are So Hard to Find

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Aug 7, 2023 7:00am PDT · 2 comments

Like many others, I dream of having my own personal artificial intelligence-powered assistant to answer texts I’ve been avoiding or land that impossible-to-get reservation at a restaurant blowing up on TikTok. So like seemingly everyone else in AI-land, I was excited when a young startup, HyperWrite, publicly launched an AI-powered assistant... Like many others, I dream of having my own personal artificial intelligence-powered assistant to...

Photo via Shutterstock/Shane Burke.

Developers Ask GPT-4 What it Thinks About Google’s AI

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Aug 3, 2023 9:22am PDT

Photo via Shutterstock/Shane Burke.

Developers Ask GPT-4 What it Thinks About Google’s AI

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Aug 3, 2023 9:22am PDT

It’s a question on the mind of every artificial intelligence startup founder and developer: Can I trust my large-language model?This deceptively simple inquiry has become more difficult to answer, as recent research shows OpenAI’s GPT-4 and other LLMs can improve in some ways over time but also get worse too.For startups using these models, it... It’s a question on the mind of every artificial intelligence startup founder and developer: Can I...