SVB affects AI startups, while Google and Microsoft debut more generative AI this week

Welcome back to VentureBeat Weekly!?

In this week’s AI Beat, I attempted to tie together two big themes circulating in the AI community over the weekend. One, of course, was the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, which kept thousands of AI startups on pins and needles until the news came that the FDIC would take control of the bank and protect all depositors.

The other is this week's Microsoft-Google generative AI battle redux. This morning, Google announced a laundry list of new generative AI capabilities and features for developers and in Google Workspace. And on Thursday, Microsoft is rumored to announce the release of GPT-4 as well as an upgraded version of ChatGPT in Microsoft 365, including Word and Outlook.

Plus:

• Yoshua Bengio calls ChatGPT a 'wake-up call'
• The hottest party in generative AI is productivity apps
• Einstein AI was good, but Salesforce says EinsteinGPT is better

— Sharon Goldman, Senior Editor, VentureBeat

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Over the weekend, the hype around?generative AI?went strangely quiet, as the fallout from the failure of Silicon Valley Bank rapidly rippled through the tech world.

By Sunday, executives at thousands of AI startups with deposits in SVB breathed a sigh of relief, as top U.S. federal regulators?announced that the FDIC will take control of the bank and protect all depositors.

In a?Reuters?report, Doktor Gurson, CEO of Berkeley-based?Rad AI, which automates radiology and health system processes, said: “I lost a couple years of my life over the weekend to be honest. It’s been a bit of a roller coaster.”

Gurson was particularly worried, he told Reuters, about how to make payroll for his startup with some 65 employees. However, with the Fed’s SVB takeover, depositors will gain access to all of their money, not just the $250,000 minimally ensured amount that had been guaranteed before the announcement. The money will be available today, the regulators said.

But as startup founders struggled through sleepless nights this weekend worrying about making payroll, it was clear that Microsoft and Google were also not sleeping — in advance of more Big Tech AI news in the works for this week.

In the context of the SVB news, and the sense of AI startup vulnerability that accompanied it, the Google and Microsoft announcements seem to highlight the Big Tech power consolidation that is happening in AI. And it is important to emphasize that there does not seem to be any evidence that issues around generative AI — including its tendency to get things wrong and make things up — have disappeared.

Read the full story.

Read more from?Sharon Goldman, Senior Editor, on?VentureBeat.com.

This is?The AI Beat, one of VentureBeat’s newsletter offerings. Sign up here to?get more stories like this in your inbox?every week.

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