Are IPOs back?
Quick Hits
Standard charge: iPhone 15 adopts USB-C.
Unlimited AI: ChatGPT-4 opens for business.
‘Red-teaming’: White House hackers ‘break’ AI.
Mark of diffusion: Google drops AI watermark.
AI vs. fraud: PayPal launches trio of AI tools.
Hard sell: SoftBank woos founders with SF AI.
Old meets new: Yahoo Mail adds AI tool.
Crypto win: Court clears path for bitcoin ETFs.
Digging straight down: Bitcoin mining revenue dips.
Driving in the rain: Cruise tests Seattle’s slick hills.
Seventh heaven: SpaceX sends seventh NASA squad.
Takeout telepathy: Uber Eats chatbot guesses orders.
Bot buster: Facebook fights Chinese propaganda.
Delivering wings: Zepto is India’s latest unicorn.
Are IPOs back?
Three high-profile tech IPOs have VC giddy again after the biggest dry streak since 2016. First came Softbank-backed British chip maker Arm, followed by San Francisco’s Instacart and then Boston-based marketing automation company Klaviyo. There are rumors of a fourth coming soon: Massachusetts biotech Neumora Therapeutics.
Fig’s seed bears fruit for Amazon
AWS acquired YC grad Fig for an undisclosed amount in its push toward generative AI, just three years after the company’s launch. “AWS believes that generative AI represents a major technological shift to transform the way its customers build, and we are beyond excited to be a part of that larger vision,” the company says. Fig, a command line interface (CLI), raised a $2.2M seed round in 2021.
Putting the ‘AI’ in plagiarism
New York University researchers looking into AI in schools found that ChatGPT did as well or better than students in nine out of 32 courses and that AI can’t reliably detect ChatGPT-generated “plagiarism.”
Llama adds to text-to-code stable
“Write me a function that outputs the Fibonacci sequence” is the type of plain language prompt that Meta’s newly released Code Llama uses to elucidate programming code. One developer calls it the “most accomplished open-sourced code generator to date.” Llama joins a growing pack that includes GitHub Copilot, Amazon CodeWhisperer and open source options StarCoder, StableCode, and PolyCoder.
Tech billionaires buy up SF
A once-secret group buying up $1B of land north of San Francisco to form a solar-powered city of 10k homes includes LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman, managing partners at Andreessen Horowitz, and Laurene Powell Jobs, widow of Steve Jobs.
领英推荐
Duck Hunt bags Qakbot
A seven-country strike force dubbed “Duck Hunt” bagged the decade-old Qakbot hacking network. A U.S. attorney called it the “most significant technological and financial operation ever led by the department against a botnet.”
Rise of the insect factory
CRISPR and other new tech are ushering forward the age of so-called insect factories that produce agriculture feed and bugs for biofuel. It’s projected to be a $1B market in the next few years. Companies edit genes to speed up the process and make bugs more durable to shipping.
The Weekly Pulse
Survey: Businesses expect remote work gains
Business leaders across a variety of industries expect the push toward all-remote and hybrid-remote work to continue, despite the current wave of back-to-office mandates. This is the latest finding of a survey by the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, the University of Chicago, and Stanford. Executives say about 24% of their workforce is already partially or fully remote, and they expect that to tick up in coming years.
Recently Funded Companies
India-based SatSure, a startup offering Earth observation data and analytics, raised a $15M Series A led by Baring Private Equity Partners.
Palo Alto, Calif.-based Arkifi, a finance workflow automation tool, raised a $9M seed fund led by Khosla Ventures and Nyca Partners.
Indianapolis-based ConverSight, a data analytics startup, raised a $9M Series A led by Surface Ventures.
England-based Scriptic, a media tech startup, raised a $9M seed fund to create AI-powered interactive entertainment.
New Zealand-based Kiki, a subletting app formerly called “EasyRent,” raised a?$6M seed round led by Blackbird Ventures.
Austin, Texas-based Qase, a software testing platform for development teams, raised a $6.7M Series A led by Chrome Capital.
North Carolina-based Raleon, a web3 engagement platform, raised $3.8M in seed funding led by Blockchange.
London-based Borderless, a workforce migration platform, raised a $3.2M seed fund led by Backed VC.
Montreal-based Flojoy, a provider of no-code, Python-based test measurement software, raised a $1.3M seed fund led by Flybridge Capital Partners.
Tweet of the Week
Podcasts of the Week
Madrona’s Matt McIlwain on Seattle’s place at the center of the AI universe (Shift AI Podcast)
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