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☆ VCs are 'hedging their bets,' backing competing LLMs like Anthropic and OpenAI, breaking a long-standing venture taboo
▼ + stars: | 2024-10-26 | by ( Ben Bergman | Riddhi Kanetkar | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

Venture firms are increasingly investing in competing LLM startups like OpenAI and xAI. Some VCs argue investing in multiple LLMs is strategic, while others see it as unethical. AdvertisementWhen venture firms pull out their checkbooks, there has traditionally been an unspoken rule: Do not back a competitor. Sound Ventures and Wisdom Ventures backed both OpenAI and Anthropic. There is also the matter of money, with only a handful of firms capable of writing the colossal checks required to fund LLM companies.

Persons: VCs, —, Joe Aaron, — Sheel, Andreessen Horowitz, Elon Musk's XAI, Ilya Sutskever, Umesh Padval, Padval, Anthropic, OpenAI, Gregg Hill, they've Organizations: Service, Sequoia Capital, Fidelity, Ark Invest, Sound Ventures, Wisdom Ventures, Thomvest Ventures, Parkway Venture, Madrona Ventures, NASDAQ Locations: OpenAI, Canadian

☆ Security threats to AI models are giving rise to a new crop of startups
▼ + stars: | 2024-10-16 | by ( Sri Muppidi | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

The hazards against AI models and the data that train them are growing in the age of large language models. What's emerged is a growing group of startups aimed at tackling security threats related to AI. Credo AI, which has raised $41.3 million in total funding, is an AI governance platform that helps companies adopt AI responsibly by measuring and monitoring its risks. Pappu added that customers may not be aware that the shared information may also be used to train broader AI models. AdvertisementTo address the growing number of security concerns in AI, startups are now applying continuous monitoring to the space.

Persons: —, Ashish Kakran, What's, Kakran, that's, Narayana Pappu, Pappu, Arvind Jain, Lauri Moore, Moore, Arvind Ayyala, Ayyala Organizations: Companies, Service, Thomvest Ventures, Attackers, Bessemer Venture Partners, Haize Labs, Evolution Equity, Moore Strategic Ventures

☆ StackGen uses AI to auto-generate infrastructure from code. Check out the pitch deck the startup used to land a $12.3 million supersized seed round.
▼ + stars: | 2024-09-24 | by ( Samantha Stokes | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +1 min

StackGen raised $12.3 million in seed funding led by Thomvest Ventures. The startup uses AI to auto-generate infrastructure from code, boosting developer efficiency. Generative AI is transforming software engineering, with many startups securing large seed rounds. AdvertisementGenerative AI is giving software engineering a massive boost, and one startup just raised a supersized seed round for its tech that uses code to create generative infrastructure. The startup, formerly known as appCD, rebranded to StackGen and raised a $12.3 million seed funding round led by Thomvest Ventures.

Persons: StackGen, — Organizations: Thomvest Ventures, Service, StackGen, FireBolt Ventures, WestWave, Business

☆ AI startups should brace for a wave of down rounds, investors say. Here's how it might play out.
▼ + stars: | 2024-09-24 | by ( Riddhi Kanetkar | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

Read previewDown rounds and flat rounds for VC-backed startups have hit an all-time high this year since 2014. And AI startups, which have been the darlings of the tech ecosystem since late 2022, aren't exempt from the trend. The deal was seen by some investors as an omen for a wider phenomenon in the AI ecosystem — an impending wave of flat rounds and down rounds. "Investors went crazy for AI startups with zero revenue, at higher valuations, which will be an issue," said Umesh Padval, managing director at Thomvest Ventures. Down rounds are on the riseIn 2022, 90.2% of AI startups in the US raised up rounds, while 6.5% raised down rounds, according to PitchBook data.

Persons: —, we've, Andreas Riegler, Umesh Padval, Padval, Francesco Ricciuti Organizations: Service, Microsoft, Business, Big Tech, APEX Ventures, Jasper, Google, Thomvest Ventures, Runa Locations: London

☆ Nvidia is on an acquisition spree even as regulatory scrutiny heats up and AI M&A cools
▼ + stars: | 2024-08-05 | by ( Emma Cosgrove | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

According to public announcements, the firm has made four acquisition deals so far in 2024, exactly even with Nvidia's 2020 deal total. Nvidia declined to discuss its acquisition strategy for this report, citing a quiet period before it announces earnings on August 28. In May, Nvidia agreed to acquire Deci AI, another Israeli startup that makes tools for developers to build AI models, for $300 million. In July Nvidia competitor AMD announced an agreement to acquire Silo AI, a Finnish AI startup, for $655 million. And this quiet trickle of deals in various forms is unlikely to stop since the market for AI talent is so tight.

Persons: —, Nader Khalil, Colette Kress, Kress, it's, OpenAI, Paul Baier, GAI, Baier, Umesh Pavdal, Thomvest Organizations: Service, Nvidia, Microsoft, Department of Justice, Federal Trade Commission, Business, ARM, Softbank, Politico, Shoreline, LinkedIn, Citi Global, DOJ, FTC, Amazon, AMD, Silo Locations: Israeli, California, San Francisco, Finnish

For Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, being almost the only game in town for AI chips isn't enough. AdvertisementThe company also runs Nvidia Inception, an incubator and venture network that counts more than 20,000 early-stage companies among its membership. "I think it's crazy," said another founder whose company received investment from NVentures, who spoke on condition of anonymity. Any company trying to do anything major in AI has spent the past two years buying them by the truckload. AdvertisementHe says he's received personal calls from Huang in which the Nvidia CEO weighs in on company decisions or expresses disapproval of his public statements.

Persons: Jensen Huang, Chris Brown, Brown, Huang, Vishal Bhagwati, Sid Siddeek, Jensen, Umesh, Padval, Uber, Nvidia's, Lisa Su, he's, there's Organizations: Service, Nvidia, Business, Corporate, Cohere's, Google, AMD Locations: Silicon Valley, New York, NVentures, OpenAI

☆ Nvidia's moat will be tested by a potential AI chip IPO
▼ + stars: | 2024-06-26 | by ( Emma Cosgrove | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

Cerebras Systems, a startup trying to challenge Nvidia on the AI chip battlefield, is reportedly headed for an IPO toward the end of 2024. This is one of the primary elements holding back even some AWS customers from using Amazon's AI chips. But, most AI developers must go through gnarly work to change their software if they want to change their hardware. His startup Vimaan is building tech for a future "dark warehouse" that requires no humans to operate. Advertisement"Am I gonna take a chance to switch out a whole infrastructure that we've built on the Nvidia platform?"

Persons: —, Lior Susan, Susan, CUDA, Thomvest, they're, He's, Padval, Jensen Huang, Thomas Sohmers, Ganapathi, Vimaan, Pavdal Organizations: Service, Cerebras Systems, Nvidia, Eclipse Ventures, Business, CUDA, NVIDIA CUDA, AMD, Qualcomm, Google, Intel, UXL Foundation, Amazon's Industrial Innovation Fund Locations: CUDA

☆ Meta's unique approach to developing AI puzzles Wall Street, but techies love it
▼ + stars: | 2023-10-16 | by ( Jonathan Vanian | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +18 min

If the world's leading AI researchers use Llama, Meta could have an easier time hiring skilled technologists who understand the company's approach to development. Spisak helped oversee PyTorch and other open source AI projects when he worked at Meta from 2018 until January 2023. Although a number of open source LLMs are available, Lambert said Llama 2 is by far the most popular. "Facebook was not and that's sort of how they move forward and democratizing this, giving sort of broad access to open source. However, open source doesn't always win, and Padval acknowledged that "in this case, I don't know how it's going to evolve."

Persons: Mark Zuckerberg, Josh Edelson, Mark Zuckerberg's multibillion, Joseph Spisak, that's, Zuckerberg, Meta, Andrew Bosworth, Yann LeCun, isn't, Susan Li, Spisak, Cai GoGwilt, GoGwilt, OpenAI's, Ahmad Al, Dahle, he's, Jim Fan, Arjun Bansal, Jensen Huang, Nathan Lambert, Lambert, Critics, Umesh Padval, " Lambert, Nvidia's, Fan, Meta's, Taka Ariga, Ariga, Claude, Elon Musk, Tesla, Nur Hamdan, OpenAI's GPT, Sam Altman, Guido Appenzeller, Thomvest's Padval, Padval Organizations: Meta, AFP, Getty, Microsoft, Industry, Linux, Microsoft Windows, Facebook, Twitter, Finance, Google, AI Research, FAIR, Apple, Nvidia, Web Services, Thomvest Ventures, TC Cowen, United, United Arab Emirates, U.S, Government, AWS, Bloomberg, Amazon, VMware, Intel, Red Hat Locations: Menlo Park , California, Taiwan, United Arab, Washington, Elon, Hamadan, Seoul, South Korea

☆ AI startup Cohere raises $270 mln in Nvidia-backed funding round
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-08 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

June 8 (Reuters) - Cohere, an AI foundation model company that competes with Microsoft-backed OpenAI, said on Thursday it had raised $270 million in a funding round backed by Nvidia (NVDA.O), Oracle (ORCL.N) and Salesforce Ventures, among others. Generative AI aims to make human-like creations through computer code that has processed vast amounts of data. Cohere did not reveal its valuation after the latest funding round. AI startups are a bright spot in an otherwise subdued market for venture capital funding, particularly for technology companies, amid rising interest rates and increased investor focus on profitability. Last month, Anthropic, another AI startup which has received backing from Alphabet Inc's (GOOGL.O) Google, also raised $450 million in a new round.

Persons: Cohere, Aidan Gomez, Manya Saini, Shounak Dasgupta Organizations: Microsoft, Nvidia, Oracle, Salesforce Ventures, Inovia Capital, Schroders, Thomvest Ventures, ChatGPT, Google, Thomson Locations: Bengaluru

☆ Nvidia invests in Google-linked generative A.I. startup Cohere
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-08 | by ( Natalie Rose Goldberg | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +4 min

Cohere, an enterprise-focused generative artificial intelligence startup, has raised $270 million in a Series C round of venture capital which includes AI giant Nvidia as an investor. In the new Cohere round, Oracle and Salesforce were also investors. Cohere is one of the companies that the new Salesforce Ventures generative AI fund is investing in. "We want to build that toolkit that's accessible to any dev," co-founder and CEO Aidan Gomez told CNBC in June 2022. Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang expressed confidence in Cohere, saying in a press release announcing the funding, "The team at Cohere has made foundational contributions to generative AI.

Persons: OpenAI, Cohere, Aidan Gomez, Gomez, Nick Frosst, Jensen Huang, DTCP Organizations: Nvidia, Oracle, Microsoft, CNBC, Google, Google Research, Inovia Capital, Schroders, Thomvest Ventures, Ventures Locations: CoreWeave, Cohere

☆ 4 survival strategies for proptech housing startups as they enter the sector's hardest year yet
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-07 | by ( Alex Nicoll | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

Proptech, the application of technology and venture capital to real estate, is naturally grappling with the change. Amid the threat of a recession, proptech startups have resorted to layoffs and other cost-cutting measures. In the meantime, Wedlake said, proptech companies and venture capitalists have shelved the "growth at all costs" mindset. In a recent blog post, Wedlake outlined four tactics that proptech startups were using to survive the deep freeze. So if proptech startups need to fundraise in 2023, they're likely going to have to accept lower valuations to attract any capital, Wedlake said.

☆ The tech IPO market collapsed in 2022, and next year doesn't look much better
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-29 | by ( Ari Levy | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +7 min

The Stockholm-based company raised financing at a $6.7 billion valuation this year, an 85% discount to its prior valuation of $46 billion. Butler doesn't expect the IPO market to get appreciably better in 2023. Butler also thinks that Silicon Valley has to adapt to a shift away from the growth-first mindset before the IPO market picks up again. Butler said he expects this "cultural reset" to take a couple more quarters and said, "that makes me remain pessimistic on the IPO market." Databricks raised $1.6 billion at a $38 billion valuation in August of 2021, near the market's peak.

☆ The pros and cons of going to graduate school right now, according to academic and business experts
▼ + stars: | 2020-07-09 | by ( Robin Madell | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +13 min

Due to the current job market, many recent college graduates are considering going back to school. Could now be a smart time to put your job search on ice and shift gears to graduate school? The prosYou avoid entering a limited job market and possibly stunting your compensationPatrick Mullane, executive director of Harvard Business School Online, explained one benefit of going to graduate school while the economy isn't robust. J. Celeste Walley-Jean, dean at Clayton State University's School of Graduate Studies & Inclusive Engagement, noted that another indicator that the timing may be right to attend graduate school is cost. "If you just graduated and can't find a job, grad school might seem like a great way to ride out the recession.

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