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☆ 2023 has been an AI feeding frenzy, here are the startups that attracted the most investment this year
▼ + stars: | 2023-12-04 | by ( Darius Rafieyan | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +7 min

Despite an overall slump in startup funding, 2023 saw a scramble among investors to pour money into AI and machine learning startups. And the company's star still appears to be rising, despite a messy leadership struggle that recently spilled into public view. Meanwhile OpenAI's perennial rival Anthropic attracted multi-billion dollar investments from both Google and Amazon to fund a competing AI model known as Claude. At the same time legacy companies from John Deere to accounting firm PwC played up their AI bona fides to capitalize on the hype. The list doesn't include startups who have not publicly released the amount of their funding rounds.

Persons: OpenAI, Anthropic, Claude, Databricks, John Deere, PwC, Fresh Organizations: Microsoft, Google, Alpha, Technology, Monogram, Sigma, Lambda, Helsing, Metals, Eagle Eye, Amelia, Asimov, Farmers Business, Harbinger, Prins, Silo, Mistral, Alto, AMP, Management Software, Universal, Coro, Kodiak Robotics, Aerospace, Defense, Sana, Corti, Kyte, Mitra, Tech, Boss Digital Technology, Halcyon, & $ Locations: PitchBook

The model, codenamed as “Olympus”, has 2 trillion parameters, the people said, which could make it one of the largest models being trained. OpenAI's GPT-4 model, one of the best models available, is reported to have one trillion parameters. As head scientist of artificial general intelligence (AGI) at Amazon, Prasad brought in researchers who had been working on Alexa AI and the Amazon science team to work on training models, uniting AI efforts across the company with dedicated resources. It has also partnered with AI model startups such as Anthropic and AI21 Labs, offering them to Amazon Web Services (AWS) users. Training bigger AI models is more expensive given the amount of computing power required.

Persons: OpenAI's, Rohit Prasad, Andy Jassy, Prasad, Krystal Hu, Gerry Doyle Organizations: Reuters, Alexa, AI21 Labs, Amazon Web Services, Amazon, Thomson Locations: San Francisco

☆ Israel's Mobileye CEO Urges That Netanyahu Be Replaced Immediately
▼ + stars: | 2023-10-29 | by ( Oct. | At A.M. | ) www.usnews.com time to read: +2 min

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - The head of self-driving auto technologies firm Mobileye and one of Israel's leading businessmen, Amnon Shashua, on Sunday urged the immediate ouster of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his government. The only solution to the current situation in Israel is to replace the government, and it needs to happen immediately," Shashua wrote in an opinion piece in financial daily Calcalist. Netanyahu has not taken responsibility over intelligence and operational failures, saying only that there would be time to ask tough questions, including of himself, after the war. Shashua co-founded Mobileye firm in 1999. It was bought by Intel in 2017 for $15.3 billion and last year again went public.

Persons: Amnon Shashua, Benjamin Netanyahu, Shashua, Netanyahu, Steven Scheer, Ari Rabinovitch, Bernadette Baum Organizations: Sunday, Calcalist, Reuters, Intel, AI21 Labs Locations: JERUSALEM, Gaza, Israel

☆ Israel's Mobileye CEO urges that Netanyahu be replaced immediately
▼ + stars: | 2023-10-29 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

[1/2] Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu holds a press conference with Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and Cabinet Minister Benny Gantz (not pictured) in the Kirya military base in Tel Aviv , Israel , 28 October 2023. ABIR SULTAN POOL/Pool via REUTERS Acquire Licensing RightsJERUSALEM, Oct 29 (Reuters) - The head of self-driving auto technologies firm Mobileye (MBLY.O) and one of Israel's leading businessmen, Amnon Shashua, on Sunday urged the immediate ouster of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his government. Netanyahu has not taken responsibility over intelligence and operational failures, saying only that there would be time to ask tough questions, including of himself, after the war. Shashua co-founded Mobileye firm in 1999. Reporting by Steven Scheer and Ari Rabinovitch; Editing by Bernadette BaumOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Persons: Benjamin Netanyahu, Yoav Gallant, Benny Gantz, Amnon Shashua, Shashua, Netanyahu, Steven Scheer, Ari Rabinovitch, Bernadette Baum Organizations: REUTERS Acquire, Rights, Sunday, Calcalist, Reuters, Intel, AI21 Labs, Thomson Locations: Tel Aviv, Israel, ABIR, Gaza

☆ Web Summit CEO apologises for comments on Israeli conflict
▼ + stars: | 2023-10-17 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

JERUSALEM, Oct 17 (Reuters) - Web Summit Chief Executive and founder Paddy Cosgrave on Tuesday apologised for comments he made on the Israeli-Hamas conflict that prompted some technology companies and investors to withdraw plans to attend its conference in Portugal next month. Web Summit, one of the world's largest tech conferences, will take place in Lisbon from Nov. 13-16, with attendees from companies such as Meta (META.O) and Microsoft (MSFT.O) to investors such as Atomico. "War crimes are war crimes even when committed by allies, and should be called out for what they are," wrote Cosgrave, who was born in Ireland. Among executives to have cancelled their participation at Web Summit are AI21 Labs' Ori Goshen; Tome's Keith Peiris; Sequoia Capital partner Ravi Gupta; Yinon Costica, co-founder of Israeli cybersecurity unicorn Wiz; and Y Combinator’s Garry Tan, according to LinkedIn and X posts. Philippe Botteri, CEO of tech investor Accel, said in a LinkedIn post on Monday he would no longer speak at Web Summit.

Persons: Paddy Cosgrave, Cosgrave, I’m, Leo Varadkar's, Israel, Cosgrove, Goshen, Tome's Keith Peiris, Ravi Gupta, Yinon Costica, Y, Garry Tan, Philippe Botteri, Portugal Dor Shapira, Steven Scheer, Supantha Mukherjee, Josephine Mason, Alison Williams, Mark Potter Organizations: Web, Microsoft, Palestinian, Hamas, Irish, AI21 Labs, Sequoia Capital, Thomson Locations: Portugal, Lisbon, Gaza, Israel, Ireland, Jerusalem, Stockholm, London

☆ Tech leaders are pulling out of a CEO's conference over remarks he made about Israel
▼ + stars: | 2023-10-16 | by ( Erin Snodgrass | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

"War crimes are war crimes even when committed by allies, and should be called out for what they are." War crimes are war crimes even when committed by allies, and should be called out for what they are. Israel's ambassador to Portugal, Dor Shapira, announced Monday that his country would no longer participate in the Web Summit conference as a result of Cosgrave's "outrageous statements." AdvertisementAdvertisement"We are saddened to hear that some Israelis in the tech community will no longer be attending Web Summit," a spokesperson said. "To repeat: War crimes are war crimes even when committed by allies & should be called out for what they are," Cosgrave wrote.

Persons: Israel, —, Paddy Cosgrave, I'm, Cosgrave, I’m, — Paddy Cosgrave, Dor Shapira, Shapira, Garry Tan, Y, Goshen, Ravi Gupta, Keith Peiris, Tome, Adam Singolda, David Marcus Organizations: Tech, Service, Web, AI21 Labs, Sequoia, PayPal, Web Summit, Hamas Locations: Europe, Israel, Irish, Lisbon, @paddycosgrave, Portugal, Goshen, Gaza, Palestinian

☆ Amazon invests up to $4 billion in Anthropic AI in exchange for minority stake and further AWS integration
▼ + stars: | 2023-09-25 | by ( Brian Fung | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +2 min

As part of the deal, AWS will become the “primary” cloud provider for Anthropic, with the AI company using Amazon’s cloud platform to do “the majority” of its AI model development and research into AI safety, the companies said. That will include using Amazon’s suite of in-house AI chips. Anthropic also made a “long-term commitment” to offer its AI models to AWS customers, Amazon said, and promised to give AWS users early access to features such as the ability to adapt Anthropic models for specific use cases. Anthropic already offers its models to AWS users through Amazon Bedrock, Amazon’s one-stop shop for AI products. In a release, Anthropic said that Amazon’s minority stake would not change its corporate governance structure nor its commitments to developing AI responsibly.

Persons: Anthropic, ” Anthropic, Biden, OpenAI, Bing Organizations: CNN, Amazon Web Services, AWS, Amazon, AI21 Labs, Microsoft Locations: Anthropic, OpenAI

☆ AI startup AI21 Labs valued at $1.4 bln after latest fund raise
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-30 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

Aug 30 (Reuters) - Israel-based AI startup AI21 Labs said on Tuesday it has raised $155 million in a Series C funding round which saw participation from technology heavyweights Alphabet's (GOOGL.O) Google and Nvidia (NVDA.O). With the latest round, AI21 has raised a total capital of $283 million at a valuation of $1.4 billion, the company said. AI21 is among a clutch of AI startups that have benefited from this boom, attracting strong interest from venture capital firms and other investors. "The innovative work by the AI21 Labs team will help enterprises accelerate productivity and efficiency with generative AI-based systems," said Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of Nvidia. Founded in 2017, AI21 Labs has built a strong customer base, from consumers to Fortune 100 companies.

Persons: Alphabet's, AI21, OpenAI, Jensen Huang, Jaiveer Singh, Krishna Chandra Organizations: Google, Nvidia, Companies, Microsoft, AI21 Labs, Fortune, Thomson Locations: Israel, Bengaluru

☆ How Amazon is racing to catch Microsoft and Google in generative A.I. with custom AWS chips
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-12 | by ( Katie Tarasov | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +5 min

In this article METAGOOGLMSFTAMZN Follow your favorite stocks CREATE FREE ACCOUNTChips as 'true differentiation'In the long run, Dekate said, Amazon's custom silicon could give it an edge in generative AI. Microsoft has yet to announce the Athena AI chip it's been working on, reportedly in partnership with AMD. So you train the machine learning models and then you run inference against those trained models," Wood said. Amazon's custom chips, from left to right, Inferentia, Trainium and Graviton are shown at Amazon's Seattle headquarters on July 13, 2023. An Amazon employee works on custom AI chips, in a jacket branded with AWS' chip Inferentia, at the AWS chip lab in Austin, Texas, on July 25, 2023.

Persons: Dekate, It's, Nitro, Stacy Rasgon, Matt Wood, Wood, Trainium, Nvidia H100s, Rasgon, Joseph Huerta, they're, Mai, Lan Tomsen Bukovec, Gartner, Swami Sivasubramanian, Sivasubramanian, Katie Tarasov Organizations: Microsoft, AWS, Amazon, CNBC, AMD, Intel, Bernstein Research, Google, Unit, Nvidia, Seattle, AI21 Labs Locations: Austin , Texas

☆ A leaked Amazon generative AI sales playbook shows how the company is going after ChatGPT-maker OpenAI, Microsoft and Google
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-25 | by ( Eugene Kim | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +9 min

The strategy is revealed in a detailed internal sales guideline, titled "Generative AI Sales Playbook," obtained by Insider. The guidelines may help Amazon make a stronger push in the generative AI space, where companies including Microsoft, OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google have taken an early lead. 'ChatGPT is a brand new, experimental offering'The guidelines focus on SageMaker's appeal to companies looking to build their own generative AI services. For example, for c-suite executives, Amazon salespeople are told to focus on how generative AI can "improve efficiency by automating operations," the document said. For those with a bit more experience in AI, Amazon salespeople are advised to recommend new generative AI capabilities and AWS offerings to accelerate their development process.

Persons: Bard, SageMaker, JumpStart, Sam Altman Drew Angerer, Sparrow, It's, I'm, haven't, you've, Canva's, Eugene Kim Organizations: Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Stability, AI21 Labs, Amazon Alexa, AWS, Burnham

☆ ChatGPT could cost over $700,000 per day to operate. Microsoft is reportedly trying to make it cheaper.
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-20 | by ( Aaron Mok | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

ChatGPT could cost OpenAI up to $700,000 a day to run due to "expensive servers," an analyst told The Information. Microsoft is secretly building an AI chip to reduce the cost, per The Information. "Most of this cost is based around the expensive servers they require," Patel told the tech publication. Microsoft is reportedly working on a secret chipIn an effort to reduce the cost of running generative AI models, Microsoft is developing an AI chip it calls Athena, The Information first reported. Nearly four years later, more than 300 Microsoft employees are now reportedly working on the chip, according to the report.

☆ Amazon cranks up AI competition against Microsoft, Google with new cloud tools
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-13 | by ( Stephen Nellis | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

Amazon Web Services (AWS), the world's biggest cloud computing provider, on Thursday jumped into that race with a suite of its own proprietary AI technologies, but it is taking a different approach. ChatGPT creator OpenAI, for example, offers a similar service, letting customers fine-tune the models behind ChatGPT to create a custom chatbot. The Bedrock service lets AWS customers test-drive those technologies without having to deal with the underlying data center servers that power them. "It's unneeded complexity from the perspective of the user," Vasi Philomin, vice president of generative AI at AWS, told Reuters. Those underlying servers will use a mix of Amazon's own custom AI chips as well as chips from Nvidia Corp (NVDA.O), the biggest supplier of chips for AI work but whose chips have been in tight supply this year.

☆ Amazon is ‘investing heavily’ in the technology behind ChatGPT
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-13 | by ( Catherine Thorbecke | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +4 min

CNN —Amazon wants investors to know it won’t be left behind in the latest Big Tech arms race over artificial intelligence. In a letter to shareholders Thursday, Amazon (AMZN) CEO Andy Jassy said the company is “investing heavily” in large language models (LLMs) and generative AI, the same technology that underpins ChatGPT and other similar AI chatbots. Since ChatGPT was released to the public in late November, Google (GOOG), Facebook (FB) and Microsoft (MSFT) have all talked up their growing focus on generative AI technology, which can create compelling essays, stories and visuals in response to user prompts. With that in mind, Amazon on Thursday unveiled a new service called Bedrock. It essentially makes foundation models (large models that are pre-trained on vast amounts of data) from AI21 Labs, Anthropic, Stability AI and Amazon accessible to clients via an API, Amazon said in a blog post.

☆ Microsoft's $13 billion bet on OpenAI carries huge potential along with plenty of uncertainty
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-08 | by ( Jordan Novet | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +10 min

Microsoft's cumulative investment in OpenAI has reportedly swelled to $13 billion and the startup's valuation has hit roughly $29 billion. What does that mean for Microsoft's investment and broader arrangement? The structure changed in 2019, when two top executives published a blog post announcing the formation of a "capped-profit" entity called OpenAI LP. Microsoft has an exclusive license on GPT-4 and all other OpenAI models, the OpenAI spokesperson said. When considering potential exits for OpenAI, Microsoft — which does not hold an OpenAI board seat — would be the natural acquirer given its close entanglement.

Powering AI Dungeon's text-generation software was the GPT language technology offered by the Microsoft -backed AI research lab OpenAI. The high cost of training and "inference" — actually running — large language models is a structural cost that differs from previous computing booms. Many entrepreneurs see risks in relying on potentially subsidized AI models that they don't control and merely pay for on a per-use basis. Companies making the foundation models, semiconductor makers, and startups all see business opportunities in reducing the price of running AI software. "Latitude is going to continue to evaluate all AI models to be sure we have the best game out there."

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