DIRS.INFO The most relevant business & tech news

☆ It's 'liquidity, stupid': VCs say tech investing is tough amid IPO lull and 'nuts' AI hype
▼ + stars: | 2024-11-14 | by ( Ryan Browne | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +2 min

Edith Yeung, general partner at Race Capital, and Larry Aschebrook, founder and managing partner of G Squared, speak during a CNBC-moderated panel at Web Summit 2024 in Lisbon, Portugal. LISBON, Portugal — It's a tough time for the venture capital industry right now as a dearth of blockbuster initial public offerings and M&A activity has sucked liquidity from the market, while buzzy artificial intelligence startups dominate attention. And in the VC world, it's really all about liquidity stupid," Edith Yeung, general partner at Race Capital, an early-stage VC firm based in Silicon Valley, said in a CNBC-moderated panel earlier this week. When a VC makes an equity investment and the value of their stake increases, it's only a gain on paper. Yeung said the lack of IPOs over the last couple of years had created a "really tough" environment for venture capital.

Persons: Edith Yeung, Larry Aschebrook, G, Portugal —, Groq —, Yeung, there's, Big Techs Organizations: Race Capital, CNBC, Summit, Microsoft Locations: Lisbon, Portugal, LISBON, U.S, Silicon Valley

☆ Insider Today: Millennial money mistake
▼ + stars: | 2024-10-27 | by ( Matt Turner | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Check out tomorrow's edition of Insider Today for the first in a series focused on what a Trump or Harris presidency would mean for your finances. On the agenda today:AdvertisementBut first: A tech CEO puts an end to employees working remotely from Bali. In a memo to staff seen by Business Insider, Markus Villig said all staff would be required to work from the office 12 days a month starting January. Business Insider combed through 1.7 million listings and analyzed thousands of makes and models to understand what drives America. Also read:AdvertisementThe AI Power ListKaran Singh for BIFor the second year running, Business Insider released its list of the most powerful people in artificial intelligence and machine learning.

Persons: —, Ford's, Jim Farley doesn't, Trump, Harris, Jenny Chang, Rodriguez, Markus Villig, We've, Automobiles Pete Ryan, we've, Buckle, Jimmy Simpson, millennials, Karan Singh, Natalie Ammari, It's, Marc Benioff Organizations: Business, Service, Today, Automobiles, BI, Federal, Google, Walgreens, Microsoft Locations: Shanghai, Bali, United States, xAI

☆ Groq CEO Jonathan Ross reveals strategy to lead AI chip market
▼ + stars: | 2024-10-24 | by ( Hugh Langley | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

While many AI companies have focused on training large language models, Groq seeks to make them run as fast as possible using chips it developed called LPUs, or language processing units. The gambit is that as AI models get better, inference — the part where the AI makes decisions or answers questions — will demand more computing power than training will, positioning Groq to reap the rewards. Groq's special (and tightly patented) sauce is its specialized chip design says Ross. Dean asked Ross's team to design a chip based on a specific type of integrated circuit they were using, and the result was Google's first tensor processing unit, a chip designed specifically for AI. Watching the AlphaGo program land a complex "shoulder hit" move on its opponent was validation for Ross that faster inference meant better, smarter AI.

Persons: Groq, Ross, —, Google's, Jeff Dean, Dean, Ross's, Lee Sedol Organizations: Rivals, Nvidia, Google

☆ 'Let chaos reign': AI inference costs are about to plummet
▼ + stars: | 2024-10-14 | by ( Emma Cosgrove | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +7 min

All kinds of startups are rushing into the AI inference market. AdvertisementJared Quincy Davis and his AI computing startup Foundry sell inference. And cost in inference computing is even more important than in training, Groq cofounder Jonathan Ross recently told BI. In other words, "it turns out, when you make inference cheaper, people decide to do a lot more inference," Davis said. He agrees the next few years will be wildly competitive for inference providers, but he believes the winners will be decided on merit.

Persons: —, Jared Quincy Davis, Davis, Jonathan Ross, Mitesh Agrawal, Agrawal, it's, Jensen Huang, Davis isn't, Intel Andy Grove, Sriram Viswanathan, Viswanathan, Hugh Langley Organizations: Service, Foundry, SambaNova Systems, Lambda, Nvidia, Microsoft, Business, o1, Intel, Celesta Capital

☆ Nvidia's days of absolute dominance in AI could be numbered because of this key performance benchmark
▼ + stars: | 2024-09-26 | by ( Emma Cosgrove | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +7 min

Liang told Business Insider he expects 90% of AI computing workloads will be in inference in the not-too-distant future. AdvertisementThat's why several startups are charging aggressively into the inference market — emphasizing where they might outperform the goliath in the space. Speed is an important factor when multiple AI models talk to each other and waiting for an answer can dampen the magic of generative AI. The number of tokens per second that can be consumed (when a prompt goes in) and generated (when a response comes out) is a common metric for AI computing speed. AdvertisementCerebras's AI chip is roughly size of a dinner plate.

Persons: —, Rodrigo Liang, Colleen Kress, workloads, Liang, Andrew Feldman, Bernstein, Colette Kress, Kress, Nvidia's, SambaNova, Anthropic's Claude, Nvidia isn't, Jensen, Dylan Patel, Patel Organizations: Service, Business, SambaNova Systems, Nvidia, ARM, AMD, o1, BI Locations: Artificialanalysis.ai, TCO

☆ Exclusive: Healthcare AI startup Tennr is raising fresh cash from Lightspeed Venture Partners just months after its A16z-led Series A
▼ + stars: | 2024-09-24 | by ( Rebecca Torrence | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Read previewTennr, an A16z-backed startup using AI to replace faxes in healthcare, is raising a Series B round just seven months after its Series A. The startup is grabbing fresh cash from Lightspeed Venture Partners, according to two people with knowledge of the efforts. Those two people said Lightspeed preempted the fundraising efforts, approaching Tennr before the startup set out to raise more money. AI startups like Perplexity and Groq are reportedly tacking on more funding right now after closing big deals earlier this year. Some investors are taking the same approach with healthcare AI startups.

Persons: —, Tennr, Andreessen Horowitz, clamor, Forbes Organizations: Service, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Lightspeed, Business, Menlo Ventures, A16z Locations: Tennr, A16z . New York

☆ The hottest AI startups are raising back-to-back funding rounds. Suddenly, it's feeling very 2021 in Silicon Valley for a chosen few.
▼ + stars: | 2024-09-20 | by ( Ben Bergman | Melia Russell | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +11 min

Read previewIn February, Glean announced a $200 million funding round valuing the AI enterprise software startup at $2.2 billion. AdvertisementThe transaction is the latest in a string of dizzying back-to-back funding rounds at ever-higher valuations for a handful of AI startups that stand in stark contrast to the doldrums of the overall market for startups. Earlier this year, Sakana raised $30 million in a seed funding round led by Lux Capital. Slingshot AI, which has built an automated mental health counselor, also raised separate rounds of funding just months apart. Advertisement"VCs are increasingly faced with frequent requests from their hot AI companies to follow on or double down on investments," said Iris Sun, an investor at 500 Global.

Persons: —, Glean, Arvind Jain's inbox, Jain, Steve Brotman, Perplexity, SoftBank, Sakana, Gregg Hill, that's, Matt Murphy, Dario Amodei, Kimberly White, Murphy, I'd, I've, Jenny Chang, Rodriguez, Jai Das, Rajeev Dham, couldn't, Das, Sapphire, Uber, Iris Sun, Chandrasekar Organizations: Service, Business, DST Global, Alpha Partners, Bloomberg, Google, New Enterprise Associates, Khosla Ventures, Lux Capital, Parkway Venture Capital, Menlo Ventures, Getty, Sapphire Ventures, Investments Locations: Tokyo

☆ Saudi Arabia just stepped up plans to court the world's AI leaders to its desert kingdom
▼ + stars: | 2024-09-16 | by ( Hasan Chowdhury | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

In recent months, Saudi Arabia has hosted a flurry of high-profile events, leaders, and dealmaking from the AI world. This year's showcase featured speakers from top AI companies in the West, such as Nvidia, Qualcomm, Google, Microsoft, and OpenAI rival Cohere. Saudi Aramco is working with AI startup Groq to build a new data center in Saudi Arabia. For Saudi Arabia, AI doesn't just present the chance to bet big on tech's latest hype train. Saudi Arabia generated a similar amount of hype around its AI ambitions in March when it held its LEAP conference.

Persons: —, Mohammed bin Salman, Cohere, Saudi Aramco —, Hamad, Mohammed Groq, Groq, Jonathan Ross, doesn't, Adam Selipsky, Arvind Krishna, Abdullah Alswaha, PIF, A16z, Marc Andreessen, Ben Horowitz Organizations: Service, Saudi Arabia's, Business, Global AI, Nvidia, Qualcomm, Google, Microsoft, BlackRock, Cisco, Public Investment Fund, Amazon Web, IBM, Saudi, New York Times, Silicon Locations: Saudi Arabia, Saudi Aramco, Bay

☆ Watch out for the semiconductor supercycle before you start buying stocks like Nvidia
▼ + stars: | 2024-08-02 | by ( Kwan Wei Kevin Tan | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

Nvidia stock prices have more than doubled since the start of the year, and in June, it briefly became the world's most valuable company. "The boom in spending on AI infrastructure has been a major growth driver for the chip industry," Miller said. Zuckerberg even touted Meta's growing stockpile of Nvidia chips in an interview with The Verge in January, adding that he expects the company to own more than 340,000 Nvidia H100 GPUs by the end of 2024. The boom in data center builds has also spurred significant chip demand. Amazon, Meta, and Google are all designing their own AI chips.

Persons: —, Chris Miller, Miller, Meta's Mark Zuckerberg, Tesla's Elon Musk, Zuckerberg, TSMC, Thomas Rupf, Josie Ananto, Parthenon's Ananto, Jensen Huang, Goldman Sachs Organizations: Service, Nvidia, The Fletcher School, Tufts University, Business, New York Times, Bank Asia, Nvidia Semiconductor, Big Tech, Meta, Google Locations: EY

☆ The CEO of Cerebras, which could go public soon, takes on Nvidia in a David and Goliath battle for AI chip supremacy
▼ + stars: | 2024-07-15 | by ( Emma Cosgrove | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

Few would envy the task of competing against market leader Nvidia, which has between 70% and 90% market share, according to Mizuho Securities. Still, Nvidia gets most of the hype — and the revenue. Though the company will not confirm it, The Information reported last month that Cerebras has confidentially filed for an IPO. Still, Feldman expects that even consumer-directed AI models will grow larger, and larger models need faster chips. Competing with that mindshare is an uphill battle as Nvidia faces more competition and goes on defense.

Persons: —, Andrew Feldman, I'm, Feldman, Cerebras, David, He's, Cerebras's, Ramsey Cardy Cerebras, Susan Organizations: Service, Palo, Nvidia, Mizuho Securities, Business, Big Tech, Intel, Google, AMD, GSK, AstraZeneca, IBM, Eclipse Ventures Locations: California, Palo Alto , California, It's

☆ Nvidia challenger Groq is set to double its valuation to $2.5 billion in fresh funding round led by Blackrock
▼ + stars: | 2024-06-26 | by ( Ben Bergman | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +1 min

It is set to be valued at $2.5 billion in a funding round led by Blackrock, according to sources. download the app Email address Sign up By clicking “Sign Up”, you accept our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy . AdvertisementGroq, a scrappy challenger to Nvidia that is developing chips powering artificial intelligence, is set to be valued at $2.5 billion in a new funding round led by Blackrock, according to multiple sources. Groq has been rumored to be raising a new round and recently hired Morgan Stanley to help raise $300 million in new funding, the Information previously reported last month. The valuation and lead investor have not been previously reported.

Persons: Groq, —, Morgan Stanley Organizations: Blackrock, Service, Nvidia

☆ 'Going up against them is insane.' Brave startups are trying to usurp Nvidia's AI throne.
▼ + stars: | 2024-06-06 | by ( Alistair Barr | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +9 min

You could have invested a lot of money in AI chip startups several years ago. "Us going up against them is insane," said Thomas Sohmers, CEO of Positron AI, a chip startup that emerged from stealth a few months ago. "The model of AI chip startups needing to raise 10s to 100s of millions of dollars before they actually test product market fit is insane," he added. TigrisOpenAI's Altman may also be working on an AI chip startup of his own. So it stands to reason that Masa has been trying to raise money for an AI chip startup.

Persons: —, Graphcore, Thomas Sohmers, Nvidia Thomas Sohmers, Sohmers, Groq, Googlers, Puneet Kumar, Mark Hayter, Rivos, Andrew de los Reyes, Gavin Uberti, Chris Zhu, Nvidia's, OpenAI's Sam Altman, OpenAI's Altman, Altman, Masa, Softbank, Son Organizations: Service, Microsoft, Samsung, Business, Nvidia, MediaNews, Boston Herald, Getty, MIT, Google, Chrome, Matrix Capital, Intel, Harvard, Bloomberg News, Bloomberg Locations: Silicon Valley, Swiss, Groq, GroqWare, WeWork

☆ Diversify your AI plays — these are the best alternatives to Nvidia, fund managers say
▼ + stars: | 2024-03-06 | by ( Weizhen Tan | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +5 min

Nvidia may have enjoyed a red-hot run on the back of the artificial intelligence craze, but many other tech stocks have also benefited. CNBC Pro speaks to fund managers to find out the best alternatives to Nvidia that investors can consider. ASML will also continue to benefit "because without ASML there's no TSMC, without TSMC there's no Nvidia," Cvetanovski said. Ray Wang, principal analyst and founder of Constellation Research, also named TSMC, saying that it "always wins." Super Micro Computer Meeks, who is co-chief investment officer at Harvest Portfolio Management, says Super Micro Computer is his favorite alternative AI stock to play right now.

Persons: Paul Meeks, Taiwan's TSMC, TSMC, Cvetanovski, ASML, Ray Wang, Vertiv, Meeks, astronomically, Wang, Meta —, Sam Altman's Organizations: Nvidia, Veteran, CNBC Pro, Tech, CNBC, Semiconductors, Sydney, Pella Funds Management, Generations Fund, Devices, Constellation Research, AMD, Portfolio Management, Microsoft, Big Tech, Cisco, Meta, Google Locations: Pella, United States

Some are turning to startups who are pivoting to using powerful chips to run quantum-inspired software on regular computers as they bide their time. In the past 18 months, quantum software startups including SandBoxAQ - an Alphabet spinoff - raised about $1 billion, according to data firm PitchBook. Ultimately, the software inspired by quantum physics won't perform well on quantum computers without some changes, said William Hurley, boss of Austin-based quantum software startup Strangeworks. Still, he said companies that start using them will have engineers "learning about quantum and the phenomenon and the process, which will better prepare them to use quantum computers at the point that they do so." Strangeworks, which also operates a cloud with over 60 quantum computers on it, raised $24 million last month from investors including IBM (IBM.N).

☆ U.S. Argonne National Lab scales up startup SambaNova's latest AI system
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-14 | by ( Jane Lanhee Lee | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

Nov 14 (Reuters) - Silicon Valley artificial intelligence (AI) computing startup SambaNova Systems said on Monday it delivered eight units of its latest AI system to the U.S. Argonne National Laboratory, which is expanding its AI offering to researchers. With AI work taking center stage in research, Argonne National Laboratory has been testing out various AI chips and systems, Rick Stevens, associate lab director for computing, environment and life sciences at Argonne lab told Reuters. In addition to SambaNova, AI systems from startups including Cerebras Systems, Groq Inc, Graphcore, and Intel Corp (INTC.O) owned Habana Labs have been tested. "We're working with new emerging AI hardware architectures, and we get early hardware and then we play with it, we use it on our science applications," said Stevens. Steven said the lab was evaluating AI hardware for its next supercomputer to see if SambaNova and others can be included.

Search resuls for: "Groq"

15 mentions found