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☆ 26 AI experts who left Google to start new companies in 2022 as machine learning ushers in a new era of lifelike AI
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-26 | by ( Matthew Lynley | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

A wave of new startups former Google AI experts have launched hit the scene in 2022. They've collectively raised hundreds of millions of dollars and are build next-generation AI tools. Here are 26 former Google employees who left in roughly the last year, identified by Insider. At least four other Google AI employees joined Inflection AI this year. Insider identified 26 former Google AI researchers and employees who left the tech giant for machine-learning startups in roughly the past year:

☆ ChatGPT got all the buzz, but beneath it is a $1B developer framework that's quietly fueling the new era of lifelike AI at OpenAI and beyond
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-16 | by ( Matthew Lynley | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +7 min

Beneath the buzz, the next-generation developer framework Ray was key in the viral model's training. "ChatGPT combined a lot of the previous work on large language models with reinforcement as well. Before deploying Ray, OpenAI used a hodgepodge set of custom tools built on top of "neural programmer-interpreter" model. All these tools, Ray and JAX included, are in service to a new generation of combustion engines for the internet called large language models. Multiple companies, both startups and giants, are building their own large language models including Meta, Hugging Face, OpenAI, and Google.

☆ Salesforce employees say they're blindsided by Bret Taylor's departure as Marc Benioff swears he'll get him back: 'don't think you're gonna somehow get out of this alive because you're not'
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-01 | by ( Matthew Lynley | Ashley Stewart | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

Salesforce co-CEO and heir apparent Bret Taylor announced he is leaving the company. Benioff wasn't alone: many at the company were blindsided by the departure with no notice given, employees and others close to the company told Insider. At Salesforce, Taylor oversaw the $27.7 billion acquisition of Slack as COO and the launch of its real-time customer analytics tool, Genie, as co-CEO. "Just when Benioff thought he had his succession plan all figured out Taylor steps down," a recent former employee told Insider. Multiple people close to the company told Insider that Salesforce's "bench" was thin, though Benioff heavily complimented Taylor's team when asked about a potential replacement on the earnings call.

☆ VCs give their unfiltered thoughts on 28 AI and big-data startups that had investors buzzing this year
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-29 | by ( Matthew Lynley | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

It's become one of the loudest and most crowded spaces as niche startups score big investments. Insider spoke with VCs to get their unfiltered thoughts on which startups were worth watching. The goal was to come to a consensus from investors of which startups they're watching most closely and why in an explosive landscape with dozens of companies. The investors spoke on condition of anonymity so they could talk more candidly about the startups, both those in their portfolios and competing firms, and descriptions are based off insights from multiple investors. Here's what investors are saying about 28 of the buzziest machine-learning and big-data startups, listed from least to most capital raised:

☆ One of the data field's most prominent technologists is stepping aside as CEO of his startup, which many thought could unseat industry leader Astronomer
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-18 | by ( Matthew Lynley | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

Nick Schrock, creator of orchestration tool Dagster and CEO of Elementl, is moving into a new role. Elementl runs the Dagster tool, an emerging product that competes with Airflow and Prefect. A hot open source project many thought was primed to unseat a data juggernaut is now shifting its leadership as it reckons with increased competition in the race to own a critical piece of data infrastructure. And while there likely remains room for an independent orchestration tool, insiders say it's unclear whether one will be able to substantially challenge Airflow. And there's consistent buzz among insiders over whether Dbt Labs will launch its own proper orchestration product.

☆ Hot machine learning firms like Hugging Face, Snowflake, and Databricks are still hiring as the AI market heats up. Here are the skills and certifications needed to land a job in the field.
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-17 | by ( Matthew Lynley | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Data scientists and other roles can make upward of $160,000. That includes several different roles, like data scientists that analyze massive datasets for trends to inform company decisions. Data scientists for production models earn $143,960, according to the H-1B data. Advanced data scientists generally build machine-learning models that work within products, like personalization algorithms. These employees often have extensive experience, education, or both, and they earn $161,944, according to H-1B data.

☆ Andreessen Horowitz bets millions on emerging startup MotherDuck to build data analytics tech for companies that don't need all the oomph pushed by cloud giants
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-15 | by ( Matthew Lynley | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

CEO Jordan Tigani says it won't replace Snowflake but can carve its own niche in the data market. DuckDB, an open source database and analytics technology, was launched by the DuckDB foundation in 2019 to tackle this problem. It's designed for work with smaller chunks of data, which is the size most companies are actually typically analyzing, Tigani said. The round comes at a $175 million valuation with combined a $35 million series A funding round led by Andreessen-Horowitz and a $12.5 million seed funding round led by Redpoint. It could also be compared to the emerging Snowflake-endorsed data technology Iceberg (3,600 stars).

☆ The rise of Snowflake created a hole in Salesforce's long-dominant ecosystem, and now startups are rushing in to seize the opportunity
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-14 | by ( Matthew Lynley | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

A new category called "reverse ETL" is emerging as startups race to fill a gap created by Snowflake. But in recent years, a substantial shift has emerged in the way companies manage their data, dovetailing with the rise of cloud providers like Snowflake and Databricks. How reverse ETL was born to fill a hole that Salesforce left wide openThe notion of a reverse-ETL pipeline isn't necessarily new. The future of reverse ETL might not be where it startedMany investors who did not invest in reverse ETL who spoke with Insider said they were surprised the friction was so large that it was able to support a single company, much less three. "We partner with great tools like Hightouch and Census for reverse ETL to SaaS applications."

☆ Read the pitch deck Galileo used to raise $18 million to overhaul the most 'soul-sucking' part of machine learning
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-10 | by ( Matthew Lynley | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

Galileo builds tools to make sure data used in machine-learning models is labeled correctly. Read the pitch deck the startup used to raise an $18 million Series A round led by Battery Ventures. To do something about it, he and other specialists from Uber and Google launched Galileo and recently raised an $18 million Series A funding round led by Battery Ventures. Galileo works by scanning the data used to train machine-learning models, such as text transcriptions or image labels, to quickly surface errors. Read the 12-slide pitch deck Galileo used to convince investors to drop $18 million in a Series A:

☆ Databricks is joining rival Snowflake in backing a $1.5 billion startup as they race to own the way companies use their data
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-08 | by ( Matthew Lynley | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Databricks said it's making a strategic investment in the $1.5 billion data startup Matillion. It's one of a few coinvestments with a rival, Snowflake, as the two race to own the data experience. Another unicorn startup is joining the small club of companies backed by both Snowflake and Databricks, the big-data rivals that are racing to own companies' entire experiences working with their data. The Databricks Ventures partner Andrew Ferguson said Matillion appealed to a slightly different customer profile than that of Databricks' traditional highly technical audience. While data budgets may be getting more scrutiny, there hasn't been any significant impact in the company's performance, he said.

☆ Read exclusive 13-slide pitch deck data startup Alation used to raise $123 million from investors like Databricks, Dell, and Thoma Bravo
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-02 | by ( Matthew Lynley | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Data startup Alation announced it raised $123 million at a more than $1.7 billion valuation. There are also smaller companies in the data cataloging space including firms like Metaphor Data, Acryl Data, and Stemma. Data tools like Alation, however, have been able to still grow and find financing, Sangani said. "When you have to make hard choices you need good data, and that logic extends to data tools," Sangani said. Databricks and Snowflake are also co-investors in data collaboration tool Hex, $900 million machine learning startup Tecton, and $4.2 billion data juggernaut Dbt Labs.

☆ 19 top venture capitalists to know that invest in AI and machine-learning startups like Hugging Face and Databricks
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-24 | by ( Sindhu Sundar | Matthew Lynley | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +1 min

In 2021, VC-deal activity in AI tech shot up to $118 billion, according to PitchBook data. Investment journeys have validated some long-term AI VCs over the past decade. In 2022, VC investments in AI and machine learning amounted to $48.2 billion as of June 30, according to a recent PitchBook report. Last year, VC deals in AI and machine learning amounted to $118 billion, a roughly 80% increase from 2020, according to the report. Here are 19 venture capitalists to know who specialize in AI and machine learning:

☆ Dbt Labs, the startup that's quietly become a big-data juggernaut, is launching new tools to cement its place in a future where companies run their operations on Snowflake and Databricks
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-18 | by ( Matthew Lynley | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

Dbt Labs is launching a new tool for analysts to streamline the way they review company data. $4.2 billion startup Dbt Labs has quietly become one of the data world's most influential companies. $4.2 billion startup Dbt Labs has quietly become one of the key catalysts of rebuilding the way companies analyze their data using tools like Snowflake and Databricks. Dbt's Semantic Layer creates a central repository for metric definitions that a company needs to track the performance of its business. "Nobody wants to use a semantic layer that isn't tightly coupled with the business intelligence experience," Handy said.

☆ Stability AI, the startup behind the hot text-to-image art generator Stable Diffusion, quietly raised funding at a $1 billion valuation
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-11 | by ( Matthew Lynley | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Stable Diffusion text-to-image model creator Stability AI has closed a massive financing round. Stable Diffusion is among a number of hyper-popular models like OpenAI's DALL-E 2. Stability AI, the creators of the hyper-popular text-to-image generator Stable Diffusion, has closed a new funding round that values the company at $1 billion, multiple sources familiar with the deal tell Insider. Founded in 2020, London-based Stability AI quickly became a household name in AI with the public release of Stable Diffusion in August 2022. For the time being, however, Stability AI is a young startup with a yet-unproven business plan.

☆ Salesforce's next big thing is a major push to keep its data at the center of a market increasingly dominated by firms like Snowflake
▼ + stars: | 2022-09-22 | by ( Matthew Lynley | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +8 min

But many tools, like Snowflake, have emerged to make Salesforce data points one of many in analytics. And Salesforce on Tuesday said it is launching a direct integration with Amazon's machine learning tool SageMaker to support custom machine learning models. At its Tableau keynote, Salesforce emphasized the company's Einstein integrations with Snowflake, with the presentation working with Snowflake data. And with these moves, Salesforce is ensuring the analysis and usage of Salesforce data and its results can remain inside Salesforce's sphere of influence. It enables organizations to connect other data lake tools and operate Salesforce data.

☆ The quiet success of Tecton, a $900 million startup, has turned rivals Snowflake and Databricks into co-investors — and fanned a fierce debate over the future of AI
▼ + stars: | 2022-09-20 | by ( Matthew Lynley | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

Tecton, which specializes in a technology called feature stores, was a more divisive subject among industry insiders. Both Databricks and Snowflake have invested heavily in real-time data pipelines, including in Tecton's latest funding round. But it was hardly alone among machine-learning startups in commanding a high valuation with nominal revenue. Many investors wondered whether Tecton's feature stores were "a feature, not a product," as Steve Jobs famously called Dropbox. That skepticism remains, and some insiders expect a roll-up of overvalued machine-learning startups that attack one piece of the workflow, including Tecton.

☆ A creator of Facebook-backed PyTorch says the AI technique behind high-profile products like GPT-3 and DALL-E 2 is due for disruption and that we're stuck in a 'weird hardware lottery'
▼ + stars: | 2022-09-16 | by ( Matthew Lynley | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

Soumith Chintala is a creator and the lead of Facebook's core machine learning tool, PyTorch. Some of today's most popular emerging AI tools, such as OpenAI's text generation tool GPT-3, were made possible by an AI technique called Transformers. And in an industry where machine learning tools and techniques are evolving at a blistering pace, a half-decade might as well be half a century. Nvidia has traditionally held a dominant position thanks to the widespread adoption of GPUs in machine learning. JAX excels at splitting complex machine learning tasks across multiple pieces of hardware, drastically simplifying the unwieldy existing tools and making it easier to manage increasingly large machine learning problems.

☆ Leaked Salesforce org chart shows the 12 most important execs under Marc Benioff and and outgoing co-CEO Bret Taylor
▼ + stars: | 2022-08-18 | by ( Matthew Lynley | Ashley Stewart | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Salesforce co-CEO and heir apparent Bret Taylor is leaving the company. A leaked organizational chart shows who the top execs under Taylor and Marc Benioff are now. A leaked Salesforce organizational chart viewed by Insider shows most of the company's top executives report directly to Taylor, and only two reporting to Benioff. That's compared to 2021, when Insider viewed an org chart that showed Benioff with 13 direct reports, including then-COO Bret Taylor. Read on for the details on how these 12 execs became the new leaders of Salesforce as co-CEO Taylor exits the company.

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