Waterman Ventures (an Alumni Ventures Fund)

In today’s fast-paced world, nearly every sector of the economy is reinventing itself with the latest advancements in technology. As the pace of innovation accelerates, companies both large and small are turning to groundbreaking approaches to create smarter, more sustainable solutions. Yet among the thousands of exciting new developments released each year, a select group of technologies stand out for their ingenuity. These are Fast Company's 2024 Next Big Things in Tech winners. The 138 honorees span 28 categories, including AI and Data, Space and Telecom, and Health. From corporate giants to ambitious startups, each honoree has demonstrated impressive progress—showing both immediate promise and potential to drive lasting change in the years ahead. You might see this dichotomy in some of our winners: Coursera, Electronic Arts (EA), Logitech, Headspace, Houzz, and Discord. It may be the first time you’ve encountered some of these brands, but it certainly won’t be the last. Whether using AI to improve disaster-response efforts, creating a hiking-friendly wearable exoskeleton, or making supply chains more ethical, each of these products, services, and technological breakthroughs reflects fresh thinking that inspires us. Read the full #FCTechAwards list: https://bit.ly/3Cz2HVj

?? Milestone Reached: 2 Million Downloads!?? We are thrilled to announce that our Hughes Hallucination Detection Model (HHEM) has officially reached 2 million cumulative downloads on Hugging Face! What an exciting journey it's been—HHEM launched just last November, and only three weeks ago, we celebrated 1 million downloads. Now, with our downloads doubling, we couldn’t be more grateful to the incredible community of researchers, developers, and AI experts supporting this work. This recent acceleration is a very clear indication that the RAG AI Assistant market is maturing and moving into more production mission-critical use cases where the accuracy of the results is paramount. A massive thank you to all who are using HHEM to bring more factual consistency to AI Assistants and Agents. Here’s to even more innovation and growth ahead! Want to learn more about HHEM’s journey and how we’re continuing the fight against LLM hallucinations? Check out our latest blog post for all the details: https://lnkd.in/g7-CXQuT ?? #GenAI #NLP #HallucinationDetection #MachineLearning #RAGaaS

Very excited to announce that Aalo has closed a $27M Series A! We’re honored to be partnering with an incredible group of investors going into this next chapter. The future of nuclear is bright, and Aalo is just getting started. We’re on a mission to make small nuclear reactors in large factories. This will enable predictable low costs and short construction timelines, making clean energy a reality, any place, any time. Here’s what resonated most with our backers: ?? Speed: We raised our $6M Seed just about a year ago, and in the past 9 months we've scaled the team to 15 ppl, finished conceptual design of our reactor, signed a Siting MOU with the DOE, and submitted our REP to the NRC with agreement from a first customer. ?? Technology: Compelling economics thanks to high fuel energy density, simplified reactor inherent safety, and a focus on factory manufacturability from day 1. There exists an optimal balance between economy of numbers and economy of scale in nuclear, and we intend to find it. ?? Team: Highly experienced and credible team. Many worked on MARVEL program, and delivered first DOE authorization for construction of a new reactor since the DOE was formed in 1977. VP of Regulatory Affairs who helped pioneer the modern RIPB licensing framework used by most advanced nuclear companies today. (And more). ?? Master Plan: Unique strategy around go-to-market, regulatory approval, and technical de-risking. More to be announced here soon! Interested in joining the team, partnering, or visiting us in Austin or Idaho Falls? Please do reach out! ?? And once again, thanks to Fifty Years, Valor Equity Partners, Harpoon Ventures, Crosscut Ventures, SNR, Alumni Ventures, Preston-Werner Ventures, Earth Venture Capital, Garage Capital, Wayfinder Ventures, Jeff Dean, Nucleation Capital, AME Cloud Ventures, Tyler Knight, Wheeler Gibson, Matthew Bellamy, Abhay Venkatesh, Guthrie Gintzler, Matt Sweeney, Calvin French-Owen, and some that we can't speak of publicly. Kudos to the whole Aalo Atomics team, cc Yasir Arafat, Amir Afzali, Richard Williams, MSME, MBA, P.E., Jeff Jones, Luke Andrew, Kyle Francis, Gavin Ridley, Asmaa Salem Farag, Kerwin G., Wheeler Gibson, Matt Hansink, and Nick Costelloe Blog post here: https://lnkd.in/gA-ahx7z