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☆ 'These are not normal;' A new type of dealmaking for AI startups is rattling Silicon Valley
▼ + stars: | 2024-08-10 | by ( Ben Bergman | Sri Muppidi | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +7 min

Google unnerved Silicon Valley last week when it agreed to pay $2.5 billion to license Character.AI's technology, hire its two superstar cofounders and 20 percent of employees. The deal came after AI developers Adept and Inflection both effectively sold themselves to Amazon and Microsoft, respectively, in recent months. It was only last year Character.AI raised $150 million in venture funding, which valued the company at $850 million. Its appeal as a chatbot that uses AI to make virtual characters that interact with users seems decidedly niche. Related storiesMost of the founders and investors Business Insider spoke to for this story say Google has little interest in Character.AI's actual product.

Persons: cofounders, Brent Queener, Kyle Sanford, Character.AI, Iris Sun, Noam Shazeer, Daniel De Freitas, Jack Selby, Peter Thiel's, Steve Brotman, Shazeer, De Freitas, PitchBook's Sanford, they're, Roy Bahat, Arvind Jain, Cameron Lester, Lester Organizations: Service, Microsoft, Bonfire Ventures, Business, Apple, Big Tech, AZ, Biden Administration, Federal Trade Commission, Department of Justice, Alpha Partners, FTC, DOJ, New York Times, Google, Madrona Venture, Bloomberg Beta, Jefferies

☆ The New A.I. Deal: Buy Everything but the Company
▼ + stars: | 2024-08-08 | by ( Erin Griffith | Cade Metz | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Last week, Mr. Shazeer and Mr. De Freitas announced that they were returning to Google. research arm, along with roughly 20 percent of Character.AI’s employees, and provide their start-up’s technology, they said. Instead, Google agreed to pay $3 billion to license the technology, two people with knowledge of the deal said. About $2.5 billion of that sum will then be used to buy out Character.AI’s shareholders, including Mr. Shazeer, who owns 30 percent to 40 percent of the company and stands to net $750 million to $1 billion, the people said. While big tech companies typically buy start-ups outright, they have turned to a more complicated deal structure for young A.I.

Persons: Noam Shazeer, Daniel De Freitas, Shazeer, De Freitas, Character.AI Organizations: Google Locations: Silicon Valley

☆ Ex-Google engineers who founded Character.AI rejoin company with new AI partnership
▼ + stars: | 2024-08-02 | by ( Jennifer Elias | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +3 min

"I am super excited to return to Google and work as part of the Google DeepMind team," Shazeer said in a statement on Friday. I am confident that the funds from the non-exclusive Google licensing agreement together with the incredible Character.AI team positions Character.AI for continued success in the future." The move also comes amid a competitive talent and AI landscape, leading companies to form partnerships against a tough regulatory landscape that has placed scrutiny on mergers and acquisitions. Britain's competition watchdog said earlier this week it is looking into Google's partnership with AI startup Anthropic, for example. In March, Microsoft hired Mustafa Suleyman, a co-founder of AI startup DeepMind that Google acquired in 2014, and much of its staff to lead AI initiatives.

Persons: Noam Shazeer, Daniel De Freitas, Character.AI, Freitas, Axios, OpenAI's ChatGPT, Shazeer, We're, Noam, Mustafa Suleyman, Suleyman, Satya Nadella Organizations: Google, Character.AI, CNBC, Microsoft Locations: Character.AI

CNN —Florida A&M University is putting a purported $237.75 million donation “on pause,” after media reports and college board leaders raised concerns about the actual value of the stock gift—and the details surrounding the donor’s previous donations. South Carolina’s Coastal Carolina University had announced a $95 million donation from an anonymous donor, who then backed out months later. At an emergency board meeting on Thursday, FAMU board of trustee and foundation members expressed their concerns and frustration about the school’s vetting process involving Gerami’s donation. He referred questions to the university and agreed to answer CNN’s questions on the following day, but he couldn’t be reached. FAMU’s Special Board of Trustees, which oversees the full school and the foundation, has scheduled a meeting for May 15 to discuss the donation.

Persons: ”, Larry Robinson, It’s, Gregory Gerami, Robinson, Gerami, Deveron Gibbons, ” Gibbons, “, Gibbons, Kristin Harper, ” Harper, FAMU, Stroud, Terry Arnold Organizations: CNN, Florida, M University, Batterson Farms Corp, Politico, Carolina’s Coastal Carolina University, Myrtle Beach Sun News, FAMU Foundation, university’s, Trustees, Foundation Board, University Advancement Shawnta, FAMU Locations: Texas, Carolina’s, Florida

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

☆ Pan Am Games show jumping ends in chaos after Canadian protest
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-03 | by ( Steve Keating | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +3 min

QUILLOTA, Chile, Nov 3 (Reuters) - The Pan American Games show jumping competition ended in chaos on Friday, with Canada arguing a judging error had denied Amy Millar a place on the podium, triggering protests and appeals. Video showed that the barrier did drop but the Canadian protest argued it did so after Millar had crossed the finish line and completed her round. The U.S. later filed a counter appeal and could be seen engaged in an animated conversation with the Canadian team outside of the judges' meeting. "We just went all together, including the Canadian team, to watch the video, the video clearly shows she touched the fence," Ward, a five-time Olympian and double gold medallist told Reuters. Ward had no problem with Canada filing a protest but was happy officials made the decision they did.

Persons: Amy Millar, Millar, Ian Millar, Brazil's Stephan de Freitas Barcha, Kent Farrington, McLain Ward, McLain, Ward, Steve Keating, Toby Davis Organizations: Pan American, Reuters, U.S, Canadian, Thomson Locations: QUILLOTA, Chile, Canada, U.S, Quillota

☆ Brazil police violence reignites after deadly Rio, Sao Paulo raids
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-02 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +3 min

RIO DE JANEIRO, Aug 2 (Reuters) - Police in Rio de Janeiro killed at least nine people in a raid on Wednesday, in the latest example of deadly violence by Brazil's security officials after 16 people died at the hands of Sao Paulo state police earlier this week. Police in Rio said they were attacked by armed assailants during Wednesday's operation in the Penha neighborhood. Lopsided death tolls have become a common occurrence in Rio raids, leading critics to allege excessive force or even summary executions by the police. REUTERS/Pilar OlivaresSao Paulo, Brazil's wealthiest and most populous state, has been less blighted by police violence than neighboring Rio. Among those killed in the Rio operation were "Fiel" and "Du Leme," two alleged gang leaders in the impoverished Juramento and Chatuba neighborhoods, police said.

Persons: Jair Bolsonaro, Bolsonaro, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Pilar Olivares Sao, Santos, Tarcisio de Freitas, Freitas, Du Leme, Marco Andrade, Rodrigo Viga Gaier, Eduardo Simoes, Steven Grattan, Gabriel Stargardter, Jonathan Oatis, Richard Chang, Alistair Bell Organizations: RIO DE, Police, REUTERS, Paulo, Thomson Locations: RIO DE JANEIRO, Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo, Brazil, Rio, Penha, Guaruja

☆ Sao Paulo governor turns heads on Brazil's right after Bolsonaro election ban
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-20 | by ( Ricardo Brito | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +5 min

Although the governor and his closest advisers insist he is focused on serving Sao Paulo state, many of Brazil's seasoned conservative power brokers are already calling the pro-business moderate a natural candidate for the presidency in three years. It also helped shore up three-quarters support among Sao Paulo lawmakers for the reform as it cleared one chamber of Congress. He is pushing to privatize the port of Santos on the Sao Paulo coast, a bid blocked for now by the federal government. And he has vowed to revive efforts to privatize state water utility Sabesp (SBSP3.SA), while Lula has decried recent privatizations under Bolsonaro. "He has to finish his mission in Sao Paulo with a second term," said one close aide, asking not to be named as he was not authorized to speak about the governor's plans.

Persons: Tarcisio de Freitas, Jair Bolsonaro, Freitas, Bolsonaro, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva's, Marcos Pereira, of God, Arthur Lira, Ciro Nogueira, Bolsonaro's, Antonio Queiroz, Dilma Rousseff, Lula, Queiroz, Ricardo Brito, Anthony Boadle, Brad Haynes, Paul Simao Organizations: Paulo, Republicans, Universal Church of, Liberal Party, ARMY, Workers Party, Sao, Thomson Locations: BRASILIA, Sao Paulo, of, Brazilian, Santos

☆ 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'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

☆ 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

☆ Google tells staff it plans to limit publishing AI research to 'compete and keep knowledge in house' as its rivalry with Microsoft's OpenAI heats up
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-04 | by ( Thomas Maxwell | Hugh Langley | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +7 min

Google told staff it will be more selective about the research it publishes. Recently, information like code and data has become accessible on a "much more on a need-to-know" basis, according to a Google AI staffer. LaMDA, a chatbot technology that forms the basis of Bard, was originally built as a 20 percent project within Google Brain. (The company has historically allowed employees to spend 20% of their working days exploring side projects that might turn into full-fledged Google products.) Google's AI division has faced other setbacks.

☆ Bolsonaro steals show at Brazil's biggest farm fair
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-01 | by ( Lais Morais | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

[1/5] Brazil's former President Jair Bolsonaro attends the Agrishow fair, in Ribeirao Preto, Brazil, May 1, 2023. REUTERS/Carla CarnielRIBERAO PRETO, Brazil, May 1 (Reuters) - Former right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro stole the show on Monday at Brazil's largest agribusiness fair where he was acclaimed by supporters from the country's strong farm sector. Bolsonaro criticized the decision by Lula to recognize new Indigenous reservations, a constant complaint by farmers in Brazil's expanding agricultural frontier. The deep-pocketed and powerful farm sector were major supporters of Bolsonaro's 2018 election. Bolsonaro faces legal risks that could ban him from running in the 2026 election.

☆ A former Google researcher behind a seminal AI paper describes how the company lost a top chatbot visionary
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-20 | by ( Thomas Maxwell | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

Character.ai CEO Noam Shazeer, a former Googler who worked in AI, spoke to the "No Priors" podcast. He says Google was afraid to launch a chatbot, fearing consequences of it saying something wrong. Like the chatbot ChatGPT, Character.ai's technology leans on a vast amount of text-based information scraped from the web for its knowledge. Shazeer was a lead author on Google's Transformer paper, which has been widely cited as key to today's chatbots. Google had also received pushback internally from AI researchers like Timnit Gebru who cautioned against releasing anything that might cause harm.

☆ Toyota to invest $338 mln in new hybrid, flex car in Brazil
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-19 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

SAO PAULO, April 19 (Reuters) - Toyota Motor Corp (7203.T) said on Wednesday it will invest 1.7 billion reais ($337.68 million) to manufacture a new hybrid, flex-fuel compact car in Brazil, which will run on both gasoline and ethanol in addition to its electric engine. Toyota's announcement came at an event attended by the firm's local head, Rafael Chang, and Sao Paulo Governor Tarcisio de Freitas. Part of the investment - roughly 1 billion reais - will come from tax credits Toyota had with the state. "Toyota believes in the Brazilian market and continues to invest in technology and innovation to meet consumer needs," Chang said. The car is set to be launched in Brazil in 2024 and sold in 22 Latin American countries, it added.

March 23 (Reuters) - Character.AI has raised $150 million in a new funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz that valued the AI chatbot startup at $1 billion, and it's in talks with cloud providers for more strategic investment, the company told Reuters. The billion-dollar valuation for a company with zero revenue is another example of the continued AI funding boom since OpenAI's ChatGPT became a widely recognized name. AI investment in 2023 to date has surpassed the full-year amount in 2020 of $1.5 billion, according to PitchBook data. While not currently generating any revenue, Character.AI plans to launch a paid subscription "in the not distant future", while keeping the current free version available, Shazeer said. Founded in 2021 by former Google researchers Noam Shazeer and Daniel De Freitas, Character.AI had attracted backers including former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman.

☆ Google's AI teams are experiencing a brain drain. Here's where its top researchers are now.
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-23 | by ( Thomas Maxwell | Hugh Langley | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +12 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 co-founder and CTO of Adept, though like Vaswani she recently left for a stealth startup. Lukasz Kaiser left Google Brain after over seven years to join OpenAI in 2021. Sharan Narang, another contributor to the T5 paper, left Google Brain in 2022 after four years.

☆ Ex-Google employees' A.I. chatbot startup valued at $1 billion after Andreessen Horowitz funding
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-23 | by ( Jennifer Elias | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +3 min

Character.AI, an artificial intelligence start-up founded by two former Google employees, is capitalizing on venture capitalists' unquenchable thirst for deals in technology's hottest space. The two-year-old company said on Thursday that it raised $150 million at a $1 billion valuation in a funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz. Andreessen Horowitz has been a significant player in driving up prices in both markets. The firm announced a $4.5 billion crypto fund in mid-2022 as the digital currency market was in freefall. A year earlier, it added to its investment in audio app Clubhouse, valuing the early-stage startup at $4 billion.

☆ Two Google engineers built a ChatGPT-like AI chatbot years ago, but execs reportedly shut it down due to safety concerns
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-08 | by ( Aaron Mok | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

Ex-Google engineers developed a conversational AI chatbot years ago, per The Wall Street Journal. Google is now racing to catch up with Microsoft's AI and plans to release its AI chatbot this year. "It caused a bit of a stir inside of Google," Shazeer said in an interview with investors Aarthi Ramamurthy and Sriram Krishnan last month. But Google's AI plans may now finally see the light of day, even as discussions around whether its chatbot can be responsibly launched continue. Alphabet chairman John Hennessy agreed that Google's chatbot wasn't "really ready for a product yet."

☆ How Google Became Cautious of AI and Gave Microsoft an Opening
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-07 | by ( Miles Kruppa | Sam Schechner | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

More than two years ago, a pair of Google researchers started pushing the company to release a chatbot built on technology more powerful than anything else available at the time. The conversational computer program they had developed could confidently debate philosophy and banter about its favorite TV shows, while improvising puns about cows and horses. The researchers, Daniel De Freitas and Noam Shazeer , told colleagues that chatbots like theirs, supercharged by recent advances in artificial intelligence, would revolutionize the way people searched the internet and interacted with computers, according to people who heard the remarks.

☆ Sao Paulo govt to hire World Bank to study privatizing water utility
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-03 | by ( Rodrigo Viga Gaier | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

RIO DE JANEIRO, March 3 (Reuters) - Sao Paulo's state government will hire the World Bank's International Finance Corporation (IFC) in the next few days for studies on the possible privatization of state water utility Sabesp (SBSP3.SA), Governor Tarcisio de Freitas said on Friday. "The privatization of Sabesp is a very complex matter," Tarcisio told Reuters after attending an event in Rio de Janeiro. Freitas said utility would only be privatized "if we reach the conclusion that we are going to increase efficiency, have upsides, reduce tariffs." "I think that all these objectives are possible and I understand that studies will show this," he said. The board of directors of Sao Paulo's state privatization program had earlier this week authorized the body to commission studies on Sabesp's possible privatization.

☆ Death toll from Brazil downpours hits 48, dozens still missing
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-22 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

[1/7] Volunteers, firefighters, army officers and a civil guard carry the body of a woman who died at one of the landslide sites after severe rainfall at Barra do Sahy, in Sao Sebastiao, Brazil, February 22, 2023. REUTERS/Amanda PerobelliSAO PAULO, Feb 22 (Reuters) - The death toll from heavy rains that devastated coastal areas of Brazil's southeastern Sao Paulo state reached 48 people, official figures showed on Wednesday, but dozens were still missing as search and rescue efforts continued. The number of casualties rose from 46 reported a day earlier, the Sao Paulo state government said in a statement. The city of Sao Sebastiao, located some 200 km (124.3 miles) from Sao Paulo, bore the brunt of the human toll, with 47 of the reported deaths. The floods in coastal Sao Paulo state were the latest in a series of such disasters to recently strike Brazil, where shoddy construction, often on hillsides, can have tragic consequences during the country's rainy season.

☆ Death toll from devastating Brazil downpours rises to 44
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-21 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

SAO PAULO, Feb 21 (Reuters) - The death toll from heavy rains that devastated coastal areas of Brazil's southeastern Sao Paulo state rose to 44 people, according to a state government statement on Tuesday. The city of Sao Sebastiao bore the brunt of the human toll, with 43 reported deaths. [1/5] Firefighters work to find victims in one of the landslides sites after severe rainfall at Barra do Sahy in Sao Sebastiao, Brazil, February 21, 2023. Sao Paulo state Governor Tarcisio de Freitas said the Navy would build a field hospital for victims starting Thursday. The deluge happened as tourists thronged to Brazil's beaches during the annual Carnival holiday, likely making the human toll much worse.

SAO SEBASTIAO, Brazil, Feb 20 (Reuters) - The death toll from devastating rainfall in southeastern Brazil rose to 40 on Monday, official figures showed, as President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva visited the region and said homes should no longer be built in areas at risk of landslides and major floods. Lula flew over the coastal town of Sao Sebastiao alongside Cabinet ministers and pledged to help rebuild the town of some 91,000 people by constructing new houses in safer places. "Sometimes nature takes us by surprise, but sometimes we also tempt nature," Lula said in a speech after meeting with Sao Paulo Governor Tarcisio de Freitas and Sao Sebastiao Mayor Felipe Augusto to coordinate their response to the disaster. "I express my solidarity with the people of Sao Sebastiao and I hope this never happens again." [1/4] Landslides are seen after severe rainfall in Sao Sebastiao, Brazil, February 20, 2023.

☆ I'm a millennial advertising CEO and my Gen Z employees have taught me to lead with emotion first
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-09 | by ( Jordan Hart | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

I've worked as the CEO of my own advertising company since 2020, and my Gen Z employees have taught me a lot. I use a unique approach when giving constructive criticism to my Gen Z workers. When we first started, Wonderkind was made up of the exact target audience of a lot of brands — Gen Z and millennials. I spend a lot of time teaching my Gen Z employees one-on-one, but I would never change that because of the results. I've had Gen Z employees leave much earlier than I wanted, but I try to combat that by checking in frequently with my employees.

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