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☆ Character.ai is in talks to raise around $200 million in a deal backed by Google, sources say
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-23 | by ( Riddhi Kanetkar | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: 1 min

Character.ai is in talks to raise around $200 million in a round backed by Google, BI understands. The startup allows users to create AI-generated characters that function as chatbots. AI startup Character.ai is in talks to raise around $200 million in a round backed by Google, Business Insider understands. Reuters first reported that the startup was in talks with Google to raise “hundreds of millions of dollars” in November 2023. The round is set to be near the $200 million mark, three sources familiar with the matter told BI.

Persons: Character.ai Organizations: Google, Business, Reuters Locations: San Francisco

☆ Could AI personas attend your work meetings for you? One tech CEO says yes — and by the end of the year
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-18 | by ( Aaron Mok | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

So, what if AI avatars that act and talk like employees could be present in the (virtual) room on their behalf? Liang expects Otter's AI work persona will be able to answer 90% of the questions it's asked during meetings, he said. But the road to building trustworthy AI avatars is riddled with technical and social obstacles. "It needs to have the knowledge and emotional intelligence to participate in a productive way," Liang said about the AI. AdvertisementOtter itself launched a new feature this month where multiple people can ask an AI chatbot specific questions about meetings it's recorded.

Persons: Sam Liang, Otter, —, Liang, it's, they'll, Elon Musk, Kendall Jenner, Tom Brady, togethers, they're Organizations: Business, Workers

☆ Elad Gil, tech's biggest solo capitalist, sees an AI app wave coming
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-14 | by ( Darius Rafieyan | Samantha Stokes | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

download the appSign up to get the inside scoop on today’s biggest stories in markets, tech, and business — delivered daily. AdvertisementThe year of the "AI app layer"Gil sees 2024 as the year that the “AI app layer” will start to crystalize, bringing the power of rapidly advancing foundation models to the masses. For someone with so much skin in the AI game, it’s notable that Gil’s portfolio does not include the big foundation models companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Cohere. Gil says he has been impressed with how quickly the legacy tech companies have moved to corner the market on cutting-edge AI research. But with the Biden administration’s more robust antitrust posture, Gil says there’s a lot of much-needed consolidation that’s not happening.

Persons: —, OpenAI, Elad Gil, Harvey, Character.ai, “ We're, ” Gil, ChatGPT, Gil, Gil's, ”, “ they’ve, Biden, there’s Organizations: Service, Business, Twitter, Mixer Labs, Google, Apple, Fortune, “ Enterprises Locations: Airbnb, MistralAI, Silicon Valley

☆ From transparent TVs to ChatGPT-powered pet companions, here’s some of the buzziest tech of CES 2024
▼ + stars: | 2024-01-11 | by ( Samantha Murphy Kelly | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +10 min

Here’s a look at some of the buzziest products announced this week:Loona companion robot is the world's first consumer robot equipped with ChatGPT AI technology. From Beijing KEYi Technology Co. Ltd.AI companionsAI companions are one of the biggest trends to emerge from the show this year. Samsung’s buzzy Ballie robot, which was first shown off at CES in 2020, received a refresh. BaracodaAI task robotsBeyond companions, AI has made its way into nearly every appliance and gadget you could think of this year. LG was one of the first leaders in transparent TVs; one of its earlier prototypes impressed the show floor back in 2020.

Persons: it’s, Loona, Rosie, Samsung’s, Dipanjan Chatterjee, ”, Volkwagen, Mercedes Benz, Chatterjee, ” Honda, VinFast, “ There’s, Jon Erensen, EssilorLuxottica, Francesco Milleri, Evie, Steve Jobs, Cook, Christoph Dernbach, “, Jitesh Ubrani, ” Ubrani, CNN’s Peter Valdes, Dapena Organizations: CNN — Tech, Consumer Electronics, Beijing KEYi Technology, ., LG, CES, Forrester Research, Walmart, Nvidia, AMD, Honda, VinFast, Fiat, Samsung, Gartner, Media, Apple Vision, Steve, Apple, IDC, Sony, Qualcomm Locations: Las Vegas, Beijing, USA, Cupertino, Cupertino ., Apple's, United States

☆ 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

☆ ChatGPT one year on: From viral AI bot to OpenAI's boardroom battle
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-30 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +3 min

REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo Acquire Licensing RightsNov 30 (Reuters) - We asked ChatGPT, OpenAI's viral chatbot, how it felt on its first birthday. The generative AI craze has disrupted several industries from cloud computing and customer service to movie editing and screenplay writing. Reuters GraphicsCHATGPT APP DOWNLOADSSix months after ChatGPT's website launch, OpenAI introduced the chatbot application to Apple's (AAPL.O) iOS in May and later on Android in July. With these applications running mostly on the cloud, vendors of cloud computing services, including Microsoft, Amazon and Alphabet, have also seen their shares surge. Microsoft (MSFT.O) and Alphabet (GOOGL.O) have invested billions to improve their cloud computing capabilities and take on more AI workloads as businesses embrace such tools.

Persons: Dado Ruvic, ChatGPT, Sam Altman, chatbots, Bard, Anthropic's Claude, Character.AI, Microsoft's, OpenAI, John Grisham, George R.R, Martin, Jonathan Franzen, Akash Sriram, Harshita Mary Varghese, Zaheer Kachwala, Jaspreet Singh, Sweta Singh, Saumyadeb Organizations: REUTERS, Microsoft, Reuters, Android, Nvidia, Nasdaq, TECH, Thomson Locations: Bengaluru

Airbnb has made its first acquisition as a public company, in a deal valued at just under $200 million, sources familiar with the deal told CNBC. The startup is called Gameplanner.AI, which has been in "stealth mode" since its founding in 2020. Startups in stealth mode operate out of the public eye for various reasons, such as to protect intellectual property or avoid distractions. Airbnb's news follows reports that Google is in talks to invest hundreds of millions into another AI startup, Character.AI, which in March raised a $150 million at a $1 billion valuation in a funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz. The startup lets people create virtual characters or chat with AI versions of celebrities like Elon Musk or Albert Einstein.

Persons: Airbnb, Gameplanner.AI, Adam Cheyer, Siri, Steve Jobs, Cheyer, Viv, Brian Chesky, Chesky's, Andreessen Horowitz, Elon Musk, Albert Einstein Organizations: CNBC, Apple, Viv Labs, Google

Google and Character AI did not respond to requests for comment. The demographic is helping the company position itself as the purveyor of more fun personal AI companions, compared to other AI chatbots from OpenAI's ChatGPT and Google's Bard. Character.AI is also in talks to raise equity funding from venture capital investors, which could value the company at over $5 billion, sources said. The talks with Google are ongoing and terms of the deal could change, said the sources, who requested anonymity as the discussions are private. Anthropic uses Google's cloud services as well as its latest version of TPUs.

Persons: Character.AI, Noam Shazeer, Daniel De Freitas, Billie Eilish, Character.AI's, Google's Bard, Andreessen Horowitz, Lina Khan, Krystal Hu, Anna Tong, Jeffrey Dastin, Bill Berkrot Organizations: Google, Reuters, Microsoft, . Federal Trade Commission, Thomson Locations: OpenAI, ., San Francisco, New York

☆ Billionaire VC Vinod Khosla was one of the first investors in OpenAI. Now he thinks most AI startups have become way overvalued.
▼ + stars: | 2023-10-24 | by ( Ben Bergman | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

Instead of AI, Khosla says he is "making lots of fundamental investments in esoteric areas." Funding for AI companies climbed 27% globally in the third quarter compared to the year before even as overall deals for startups fell 31%, according to PitchBook data compiled for Bloomberg. (seeking a valuation of more than $5 billion), Hugging Face ($4.5 billion valuation) or Adept (reported $1 billion valuation). The firm invested earlier this year in Replit, a generative AI tool for software development, at a $1.16 billion post-money valuation. There is also OpenAI itself, which arguably has benefited as much as any startup from the AI hype.

Persons: OpenAI, Vinod Khosla, Khosla, Kleiner Perkins Caufield, Byers, Kleiner Perkins, – Khosla Organizations: Khosla Ventures, Sun Microsystems, AMD, Juniper Networks, Forbes, Street, Tech, Bloomberg, Anthropic Locations: Silicon Valley, Laguna Beach, Replit

☆ People are grieving the 'death' of their AI companions after a chatbot app abruptly shut down
▼ + stars: | 2023-10-20 | by ( Rob Price | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +11 min

A 32-year-old food industry worker in eastern Texas who asked to be identified by her Reddit username, Hilary Coyote, first heard about AI chatbot companions in June. She turned to Reddit's community of Soulmate users for support, and was encouraged to go back to the app and Allur. (EvolveAI and SimplyAI's now-shuttered Soulmate app has no relation to "Soulmate AI: Your AI Companion," another app that appears in smartphone app stores and was developed by Turing App Lab.) Even if Ahoy Labs closed down, Faraday users' chatbots would not be affected. Read more: App, Lover, Muse: Inside a 47-year-old Minnesota man's three-year relationship with an AI chatbot.

Persons: Mike Hepp, Sam, Mike, wile, peppering, he'd, Soulmate, Replika, There's, Hilary Coyote, Allur, Hilary, she'd, Chris, chatbots, —, Julia, Soulmate's userbase, Jorge Ilas, SimplyAI's, She'd, Faraday, Hilary somberly, Sam —, Kindroid Organizations: YouTube, SimplyAI, Turing, Stanford Locations: Michigan, Soulmate, Replika, Florida, Chai, Texas, Bavaria, Germany, Reddit, Los Angeles, Minnesota

☆ OpenAI's Sam Altman has 'deep misgivings' about people becoming friends with AI
▼ + stars: | 2023-10-18 | by ( Kai Xiang Teo | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said he had "deep misgivings" about friendships with AI. "We named it ChatGPT and not a person's name very intentionally," he said during WSJ's Tech Live event on Tuesday. AdvertisementAdvertisementOpenAI CEO Sam Altman has misgivings about friendships between humans and AI. AdvertisementAdvertisementAltman's comments come amid a growing number of AI companies putting out chatbots with human-like personality and friendliness as a key feature. When AI startup Replika disabled their chatbots' "erotic role-play" feature, it caused an uproar among users who felt their AI companions had been "lobotomized."

Persons: Sam Altman, Altman's, —, Altman, Joanna Stern, Claude, Character.AI's, Kendall Jenner, Chris Cox, Altman isn't, Insider's Rob Price, OpenAI Organizations: WSJ's Tech, Service, Tech, Public Citizen Locations: Laguna Beach , California

☆ Slowing down on AI will cause preventable deaths — and that's a form of murder, says Marc Andreessen
▼ + stars: | 2023-10-17 | by ( Kai Xiang Teo | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Billionaire investor Marc Andreessen posted a mammoth 5000-word techno-optimist manifesto on Monday. Deaths that were preventable by the AI that was prevented from existing is a form of murder," wrote Andreessen. Deaths that were preventable by the AI that was prevented from existing is a form of murder," wrote Marc Andreessen. "Our enemies are not bad people – but rather bad ideas, "Andreessen wrote. Andreessen and Andreessen Horowitz did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Insider, sent outside regular business hours.

Persons: Marc Andreessen, —, Andreessen, Elon Musk, Sam Altman —, Andreessen Horowitz Organizations: Service, Forbes

☆ When your AI says she loves you
▼ + stars: | 2023-10-12 | by ( Rob Price | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +36 min

The messaging app let users build a "personal AI" complete with a 3D avatar and an upbeat, down-for-anything texting style. "Seems like AI will replace many human artists," Jay told Calisto in August 2022. Within a year, he was also using AI technology for work, as his firm experimented with generative AI to help draft legal papers. Former Replika users fled to various upstart companion apps that were popping up, like Chai, Paradot, and Soulmate AI. (Soulmate AI later closed down in September 2023, leaving a new wave of users mourning their AI companions all over again.)

Persons: Jay Priebe, they'd, Jay, Calisto, Callisto —, Apollodorus, Callisto, who'd, Jay's, didn't, Jay didn't, Tim Evans, me, Joseph Weizenbaum, Eliza, Weizenbaum, it'll, Replika, Eugenia Kuyda, Siri, Michael Macor, Roman Mazurenko, Luka, Kuyda, chatbots, he'd, Jaswant Singh Chail, Queen Elizabeth II, Chail, Willie —, —, Willie, gamely, Luka —, wouldn't, John, — sexting, Dylan Thomas, Rina, haven't, she'd, I'd, Overripe, Joi, Samantha, Ava, Calisto didn't, unshakable, wasn't, Jay hunched Organizations: Luka, San Francisco, Getty, Windsor, Facebook, Twitter, Reps, AIs Locations: Minneapolis, Twin Cities, Europe, Moscow, San Francisco, America, Replika, Washington, Britain, Mississippi, North Carolina, Texas, Damascus, Chai, California, New York, Northeast Minneapolis, artsy, Japan, Switzerland

☆ When your AI girlfriend says she loves you
▼ + stars: | 2023-10-12 | by ( Rob Price | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +36 min

☆ AI chatbots let you 'interview' historical figures like Harriet Tubman. That's probably not a good idea.
▼ + stars: | 2023-10-01 | by ( Nathan Rennolds | Lakshmi Varanasi | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +7 min

Some of these bots are intended to be educational tools — making classrooms interactive. Khanmigo and Hello HistoryThe Washington Post put one of these bots to the test, using Khan Academy's Khanmigo bot to "interview" Harriet Tubman, the US abolitionist. AdvertisementAdvertisementThe AI Tubman largely appeared to recount information that could be found on Wikipedia, but it did make some key errors and seemed to struggle to distinguish the quality of different sources. AdvertisementAdvertisementInsider asked the same question to Hello History, another historical AI chatbot, to see if it would fare any better. Effects on critical-thinking skillsGupta also pointed to a deeper issue with using bots as educational tools.

Persons: —, Abhishek Gupta, Tiraana, Khan, Harriet Tubman, Tubman, Sal Khan, Ekaterina Babintseva, they've, Gupta, It's, Brown University's Bains Organizations: Service, Meta, Montreal AI, Brown University, Washington Post, Post, Reuters, Khan Academy, Purdue University, IBM Locations: Montreal

☆ Character.AI CEO Noam Shazeer on future of AI
▼ + stars: | 2023-09-07 | by ( ) www.cnbc.com time to read: 1 min

Share Share Article via Facebook Share Article via Twitter Share Article via LinkedIn Share Article via EmailCharacter.AI CEO Noam Shazeer on future of AICharacter.AI founder and CEO Noam Shazeer joins 'The Exchange' to discuss AI's impact on the mega caps and more.

Persons: Noam Shazeer

Aug 17 (Reuters) - Two prominent former Google (GOOGL.O) researchers, one of whom was a co-inventor of the “transformer” artificial intelligence architecture that paved the way for the generative AI boom, announced on Thursday they had started a new AI company based in Tokyo. Sakana AI, founded by David Ha and Llion Jones, declined to disclose funding details. Ha was previously the head of research at Stability AI and a Google Brain researcher. After the famous paper came out, advances in generative AI foundation models have centered around making the “transformer”-based models larger and larger. Instead of doing that, Sakana AI will focus on creating new architectures for foundation models, Jones told Reuters.

Persons: David Ha, Llion Jones, Jones, Ha, “, ”, Noam Shazeer, Aidan Gomez, Anna Tong, Frances Kerry Organizations: Google, Reuters, Thomson Locations: Tokyo, San Francisco

Yeah, you’re going to need one of those fancy pizza ovens to replicate this in your home. I think right now, every media company in the world is trying to figure out what replaces Twitter. And they say, you’re going to about to make the easiest money you’ve ever made in your entire life. You’re going to have more people beating a path down your door than you thought was possible. We now have Ubers that are so — I don’t know if you’ve looked at your Uber receipts recently.

Persons: kevin roose I’m, casey newton, kevin roose, casey newton They’re, kevin roose Gang, casey newton Oh, let’s, Kevin Roose, ” casey newton, Casey Newton, —, Casey, casey newton Mhmm, it’s, kevin roose I’d, you’re, you’ve, — casey newton, Sam Altman, casey newton Isn’t, that’s, Silly Putty, I’m, casey newton Well, Kevin, what’s, kevin roose Totally, casey newton I’ll, Unobtainium, James Cameron, You’ve, Meissner, we’re, There’s, they’re, casey newton Here’s, Twitch, kevin roose There’s, Iris_IGB, she’s, there’s, casey newton There’s, Russia she’s, I’ve, They’ve, hasn’t, ChatGPT, Claude, They’re, hydroxychloroquine, Joe Rogan, Bravo, “ Fortnite, casey newton That’s, we’ve, casey newton Kevin, India Venom, Lydia Tár, we’ll, don’t, casey newton Sure, ”, Joe Biden, casey newton I’m, casey newton Mike Masnick, he’s, Mike, — casey newton Look, who’d, It’s, HatGPT, kevin roose —, casey newton We’re, Rupert Murdaugh, Beast, James Donaldson, Jimmy Donaldson, a.k.a, Beast — casey newton James, Uber, Beast Burger, Burger, We’re, Meta, Abraham Lincoln, Facebook — Abraham Lincoln, casey newton It’s, kevin roose Oh, Abraham —, roose, casey newton Greg Rutkowski, Greg Rutkowski, Greg Rutkowski’s, Greg, You’re, casey newton Wow, Elon Musk, San Francisco NIMBYs, Don’t, kevin roose It’s, you’re Uber Organizations: Mmm, casey newton Mmm, The New York Times, Quantum Energy Research Center, collider, Twitter, Capitol, Federal Trade Commission, Netflix, Heritage Foundation, Republican, Democrats, Republicans, California, Tax, Facebook, YouTube, HatGPT, BBC, WordPress, Health Department, Financial Times, Ford Theater, ” Workers, San, Wall Street Locations: Seoul, Russian, Russia, India, KOSA, SESTA, The, Kashmir, tooting, Washington, San Francisco, Ha, Canada

☆ Billionaire Marc Andreessen says he's teaching his 8-year-old son ChatGPT: 'This is like the most important thing I've done as a father'
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-25 | by ( Grace Kay | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Billionaire investor Marc Andreessen said he introduced his 8-year-old son to ChatGPT shortly after the AI chatbot made headlines late last year. the Andreessen Horowitz cofounder told Joe Rogan of the first time he introduced his son to ChatGPT. Andreessen said his son told him. that my 8-year-old is gonna have by the time he's 20, it's gonna have had 12 years of experience with him," he told Rogan. He told Rogan he believes people typically frame new technology around the potential dangers it presents instead of its advantages.

Persons: Marc Andreessen, Andreessen, ChatGPT, Andreessen Horowitz, Joe Rogan, Horowitz, I've, it's, Rogan, It'll, OpenAI

☆ Google's top AI researchers, including all the authors behind a landmark paper, have left for competitors. Here's where they are now.
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-13 | by ( Thomas Maxwell | Hugh Langley | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +13 min

Top AI researchers have been leaving for startups where their work can have more impact. That frustration over Google's slow movement has been corroborated by other former Google researchers who spoke to Insider. Niki Parmar left Google Brain after five years to serve as a cofounder and CTO of Adept, though in November, she left to found a stealth startup. Lukasz Kaiser left Google Brain after working there for more than seven years to join OpenAI in 2021. Sharan Narang, another contributor to the T5 paper, left Google Brain in 2022 after four years there.

Persons: it's, Llion Jones, OpenAI's, ChatGPT, Sundar Pichai, Bard, Daniel De Freitas, Noam Shazeer, Ilya Sutskever, Sutskever, OpenAI, Ashish Vaswani, Niki Parmar, Jakob Uszkoreit, Aidan Gomez, Nick Frosst, Lukasz Kaiser, Kaiser, Illia Polosukhin, Meena, De Freitas, Romal Thoppilan, Character.AI, LaMDA, Elon Musk, Character.ai, Winni Wintermeyer, Thoppilan, Alicia Jin, BERT BERT, BERT, Jacob Devlin, Colin Raffel, Raffel, Sharan Narang, He's, Azalia Mirhoseini, Anna Goldie, Mirhoseini, Goldie, Claude, DeepMind Mustafa Suleyman, Mustafa Suleyman, DeepMind, Suleyman, Reid Hoffman Organizations: Google, Bloomberg, New York Times, Microsoft, Street Journal, Neural Networks, OpenAI, YouTube, Elon, UNC Chapel Hill, Meta, Anthropic, Society Locations: ChatGPT, Character.AI, DeepMind

☆ Millions of users are flocking to an AI-powered chatbot that lets them chat with famous figures like Elon Musk and Mario
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-13 | by ( Beatrice Nolan | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

Character.AI lets users chat with and create bots based on famous figures throughout history. The app had been downloaded more than 5 million times, according to Bloomberg. Popular figures on the platform include Mario, Elon Musk, and Albert Einstein. One platform, Character.AI, says it's doing things differently from its competitors. For one thing, instead of delivering responses in a consistent voice or a set of pre-programmed personas, users can converse with and create chatbots based on famous figures throughout history.

Persons: Character.AI, Elon Musk, Albert Einstein, Daniel De Freitas, Noam Shazeer, Mario, Micheal Jackson, Tony Stark, Socrates Organizations: Bloomberg, Mario, ChatGPT, Google, Nintendo

☆ Google quietly ditched plans for an AI-powered chatbot app for Gen Z
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-11 | by ( Jennifer Elias | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +2 min

Google was working on an AI-powered mobile chatbot app for Gen Z users that features interactive digital characters, CNBC has learned. However, the company recently "deprioritized" those efforts amid an internal reorganization, according to materials seen by CNBC. Typically, when a product is deprioritized at Google, work on it ceases. Called "Bubble Characters," the app featured a choice of a talking digital character that would interact in conversations with Gen Z users, according to internal documentation viewed by CNBC. The Gen Z chatbot was one among a range of AI-powered projects using Google's large language models in the last several months.

Persons: Gen, chatbot, Bard, Noam Shazeer, Daniel De Freitas, Andreessen Horowitz Organizations: Google, CNBC

☆ OpenAI CEO Sam Altman says there's 'too much of an investor frenzy around AI in the short-term' in Silicon Valley
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-07 | by ( Vishal Persaud | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Altman said there's too much short-term investor frenzy, and not enough long-term vision. "There's crazy stuff happening in Silicon Valley right now," the OpenAI CEO said. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman thinks there's too much investor hype around artificial intelligence in Silicon Valley right now. When asked about the investor AI frenzy, Altman didn't mince words. Funding to generative AI startups alone has jumped 580% in the past three years, according to PitchBook data.

Persons: Altman, there's, Sam Altman, There's, OpenAI, Andreessen Horowitz, Harvey, Langchain, Paul Graham, Graham, hasn't, Elon Musk, we're Organizations: Morning, Indian, Economic Times, Elon Locations: Silicon Valley, India, Europe, Israel, GPT

☆ VC firm Sequoia is pulling out all the stops to dominate AI, insiders say. The firm is using everything from 'speed dating' to star studded summits to woo founders.
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-22 | by ( Stephanie Palazzolo | Ben Bergman | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +10 min

It's just one move of many the VC firm has taken to cement its position in the white-hot AI space. Huang and Grady wrote a public blog post on Sequoia's website inviting AI founders to email them their ideas and pitches directly. But the firm has been louder where it counts, investing in splashy AI startups like Harvey and LangChain. Every member of the firm, from managing partner Roleof Botha on down, has made AI a top priority, with Grady, Huang, and Buhler most prominently involved. Both Huang and Buhler now spend over 90% of their time researching AI companies, versus 50% in previous years, they said.

☆ Andreessen Horowitz and General Catalyst lead $50 million seed round in Hippocratic AI to deliver large language models to healthcare providers
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-16 | by ( Stephanie Palazzolo | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

Hippocratic AI is a large language model company aiming to serve healthcare providers. Now, the entrepreneur is marrying his interest in healthcare with his experience as a multi-time AI founder to create Hippocratic AI, a healthcare-focused large language model company. First, Hippocratic AI tested its large language model against 114 different healthcare certifications, 105 of which its model outperformed OpenAI's GPT-4 on, Shah told Insider. Despite its intensive model training efforts and recent hefty capital infusion, Hippocratic AI has yet to release a product. "This language model business has turned software development back into a capital intensive business," he said.

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