Google's AI Revolution: Major Breakthroughs & Bold Moves

16 April 2024: Google I/O Highlights, $32B AI Funding, Major AI Investments, Musk's xAI Deal, AI in Healthcare, and AR Glasses Revival

May 16, 2024

Good Morning,

Latest in AI,

1. 1-Minute Roundup
2. Headlines
3. AI Investment Deals
4. Other AI News

1-Minute Roundup

Headlines:

Google I/O 2024 reveals sweeping AI integration across products, led by the Gemini AI model.
U.S. senators propose $32 billion annual AI funding to defer comprehensive regulations.

AI Investment Deals:

Pepper raises $30M Series B to enhance AI tools for food distribution.
Monitaur secures $6M Series A for model governance in regulated industries.
Croatian AI tool Pythagora gets $4M seed funding for R&D and user growth.
Hexafarms lands €1.3M pre-seed to optimise AI-driven food production.
Crosby Health receives $2.2M pre-seed to advance AI healthcare solutions.
Highperformr raises $3.5M seed for social AI platform expansion.
ChainML secures a $6.2M seed extension for a blockchain-based AI platform.
Ndustrial raises $18.5M Series B for AI-powered energy optimisation.
Steno gets $46M to develop AI court reporting tech.
SmarterDx raises $50M to enhance clinical AI technologies.
Grasp secures $1.9M for AI assistant in investment banking
Aerial raises $2M pre-seed to advance AI-driven business data management.
Malted AI secures £6M seed to distil large AI models for enterprises.
Enspired raises €25.5M Series B for AI power trading expansion.
NablaBio gets $26M Series A for AI and wet-lab precision drug design.
Gorgias raises $29M to expand AI e-commerce customer support tools.
Trawa secures €10M for AI renewable energy procurement platform.
LanceDB raises $8M to build a multimodal AI database.
WEKA raised $140M Series E, valued at $1.6 billion.

Others:

Google will roll out AI search summaries to billions by year-end.
Google hints at the revival of AI-enhanced AR glasses with Project Astra.
AI distinguishes male and female brain structures from MRI scans.
Elon Musk's xAI is nearing a $10 billion deal for Oracle's AI cloud servers.

Headlines

Google I/O 2024: AI Takes Center Stage in Search and Beyond

At its annual I/O developer conference, Google unveiled a sweeping integration of generative AI across its products and services, led by a "fully revamped" search experience powered by its Gemini AI model.

Why it Matters: Google's AI-infused search experience represents a fundamental shift in how people interact with the company. The company is responding to the threat posed by AI-powered competitors like OpenAI's ChatGPT and Anthropic's Claude.

Zoom In:

Google Search will feature AI-generated overviews, organised results pages, and visual search capabilities.
Project Astra demonstrates real-time video understanding and conversational AI capabilities.
New models like Veo for video generation and Imagen 3 for text-to-image were announced.
Google unveiled faster and more efficient AI models, including Gemini 1.5 Flash and Gemini Nano.

Context: The announcements come amid intense competition in the AI space. OpenAI recently launched its GPT-4o model to power ChatGPT, and Google faces pressure to showcase its AI prowess while protecting its core advertising business.

Numbers:

Gemini 1.5 Pro can process up to 2 million "tokens" of text, video, and audio.
The new TPU chip for data centres is 4.7 times faster than its predecessor
Google's AI premium subscription plan allows the simultaneous processing of 1 million tokens.

Between the Lines: While Google aims to maintain its search dominance, the AI-powered features could potentially cannibalise its advertising revenue if users find satisfactory answers without clicking through to websites.

Senators Propose $32 Billion Annual AI Funding, Defer Regulation

A bipartisan group of U.S. senators unveiled a plan to boost American leadership in AI. The plan calls for $32 billion in annual spending on research and development by 2026 while deferring comprehensive regulations to address the technology's risks.

Why it Matters: The proposal highlights the urgency lawmakers feel in maintaining U.S. competitiveness in AI. It also exposes the challenge of regulating a rapidly evolving technology, potentially leaving the U.S. lagging behind regions like the EU in establishing guardrails.

Context: The proposal comes after a year-long "listening tour" amid rising concerns over the potential risks of generative AI tools like ChatGPT, including job displacement, discrimination, and election interference.

Criticism: Critics argue that the focus on innovation over regulation leaves the U.S. trailing other regions in establishing guardrails against AI's potential harms and real-world impacts, such as biased financial and health tools.

AI Investment Deals

Pepper, a New York-based tech partner for the food distribution industry, raised $30M in Series B funding led by ICONIQ Growth. The funding will support advancements in their eCommerce platform and AI tools.

Monitaur raised $6M in Series A to enhance model governance for regulated industries. This will help highly-regulated enterprises build better AI and models that businesses, regulators, and consumers can trust.

Pythagora, an AI development tool by Croatian founders, secures $4M seed funding from Y Combinator, Inovo VC, and others to enhance R&D and user growth.

Hexafarms secured €1.3M in pre-seed funding to optimise AI-driven food production. The company aims to reduce resource losses and increase crop yield accuracy.

Crosby Health, an NYC-based healthtech firm, secured $2.2M in Pre-Seed funding led by Amplo Ventures to enhance its AI-driven administrative solutions in healthcare.

Highperformr, a Delaware-based GenAI startup, raised $3.5M in Seed funding, led by Venture Highway, for R&D to expand its social AI platform distribution network.

ChainML, a Silicon Valley AI and ML lab, raises $6.2m in seed extension to develop Theoriq, a blockchain-based, community-governed AI platform aiming for autonomous and adaptive AI systems.

Ndustrial, based in Raleigh, NC, secures $18.5M in Series B funding led by ABB and GS Energy to enhance its AI-powered energy intensity platform for industrial energy optimisation.

Steno, an LA-based legal support provider utilising AI, secured $46M to expand operations and further develop its court reporting technologies, including the advanced Transcript Genius tool.

SmarterDx, a NYC-based clinical AI company, raised $50M in Series B funding to enhance AI technologies and expand its market presence. The company focuses on revenue integrity and care quality for hospitals.

Grasp, a Stockholm-based AI assistant for investment banks and management consultants, has raised $1.9M to accelerate its platform development and continue global expansion.

Aerial, based in Seattle, raised $2M in Pre-Seed funding to advance its AI-driven platform for managing unstructured business data, enhancing real-time insights and corporate information management.

Malted AI, an Edinburgh-based AI firm, secured £6M in seed funding led by Hoxton Ventures to enhance product development and expand its team. The firm focuses on distilling large AI models for enterprise use.

Enspired, an AI-based power trading company in Vienna, raised €25.5M in Series B funding led by Zouk Capital to expand globally and optimise power assets using its automated trading platform.

NablaBio, based in Cambridge, MA, secures $26M in Series A funding to expand its operations and further develop AI and wet-lab technologies for precision drug design in collaboration with leading pharmaceutical companies.

Gorgias, a San Francisco-based CX platform provider, raised $29M to expand its AI tools for automating e-commerce customer support. SaaStr and Alven led the effort, which included critical contributions from Shopify and others.

Trawa raises €10M to simplify renewable energy procurement for SMEs. Its AI platform helps businesses manage energy costs and consumption more efficiently.

LanceDB, co-founded by Chang She, raised $8M to build a multimodal AI database, enhancing data infrastructure for AI teams to accelerate product development.

WEKA, an AI-native data infrastructure platform company, has raised $140M in a Series E funding round led by Valor Equity Partners, bringing its valuation to $1.6 billion.

Others

Google to Bring AI Search Summaries to Billions Globally by Year-End

Google will start showing AI-generated "overviews" that directly answer search queries at the top of results pages in the U.S. this week.
The AI-powered summaries will roll out to over 1 billion global users by the end of 2024 as Google embraces generative AI in its core search business.

Google Signals AI May Revive Augmented Reality Glasses

Google's Project Astra AI system can "see" and understand the world through cameras, demonstrated on AR glasses.
Google co-founder Sergey Brin said Project Astra is a "killer app" for AR glasses, acknowledging Google Glass launched too early a decade ago.

AI Detects Sex Differences in Brain Structure from MRI Scans

Using machine learning on MRI data from 1,031 people, AI programs could accurately distinguish between male and female brains 92-98% of the time based on patterns in white matter microstructure.
The findings highlight sex-based differences in brain cellular organisation invisible to the human eye, which could provide insights into neurological and psychiatric conditions that present differently across sexes.

Elon Musk's xAI Nears $10 Billion Deal to Use Oracle's AI Cloud Servers.

Elon Musk's AI startup xAI is in talks for a potential $10 billion deal to rent cloud servers from Oracle over several years.
The deal would make xAI one of Oracle's most significant cloud customers as Musk aims to compete with AI offerings from OpenAI and Google.

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