data

New AI Developed by AI21 Labs Surpasses Competitors in Context-Based Task Comprehension

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Increasingly, the AI industry is moving toward generative AI models with longer contexts. Ori Goshen, the CEO of AI startup AI21 Labs, asserts that this doesn’t have to be the case — and his company is releasing a generative model to prove it. Contexts, or context windows, refer to input data (e.g. Trained on a mix of public and proprietary data, Jamba can write text in English, French, Spanish and Portuguese. Loads of freely available, downloadable generative AI models exist, from Databricks’ recently released DBRX to the aforementioned Llama 2.

“Co-Founding Data and AI Companies: Super{set} Boutique Startup Studio Secures $90 Million Boost”

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Startup studio super{set} has a fresh exit under its belt with the sale of marketing company Habu to LiveRamp for $200 million in January. Now, super{set} is adding another $90 million to its coffers as it doubles down on its strategy of building enterprise startups. We remain a venture studio focused on building companies rooted in data and AI. We found, fund and build new technology startups, mostly in the enterprise space,” founding managing partner Tom Chavez told TechCrunch. That’s one aspect in which super{set} has changed compared to 2019, Chavez said, as its method went from art to science.

Effortless Interview Note-Taking with Metaview’s Tool for Hiring Managers

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So they launched Metaview, an AI-powered note-taking app for recruiters and hiring managers that records, analyzes and summarizes job interviews. “Metaview is an AI note-taker built specifically for the hiring process,” Magos said. “It helps recruiters and hiring managers focus more on getting to know candidates and less on extracting data from the conversations. “Zoom, Microsoft Teams and Google Meet all have transcription built in, which is a possible alternative to Metaview,” Magos said. I’m skeptical and a bit wary, too, of Metaview’s approach to how it handles speech data.

StealthMole Secures $7 Million in Series A Funding for Revolutionary Dark Web AI Platform

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StealthMole, an AI-powered dark web intelligence startup that specializes in monitoring cyber threats and detecting cybercrime, announced Thursday that it has raised a $7 million Series A funding round. The startup serves over 50 clients across 17 countries in Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. One differentiator from its competitors in the cybersecurity industry is its unique expertise in Asia-related threats, Kevin Yoo, chief operating officer (COO) at StealthMole, told TechCrunch. “The high demand for Asia-oriented threat information underscores the uniqueness and value of our dataset for customers worldwide, within and beyond Asia,” Yoo said. Korea Investment Partners led the Series A round with participation from Hibiscus Fund (a joint venture between RHL Ventures, Penjana Kapital and KB Investment) and Smilegate Investment.

Farm Equipment Transforms into Data-Collecting AI with Revolutionary Orchard Vision System

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We’ve seen systems that pick apples and berries, kill weeds, plant trees, transport produce and more. A huge piece of any of these products’ value prop is the amount of actionable information their on-board sensors collect. In a sense, Orchard Robotics’ system is cutting out the middle man. The system cameras can capture up to 100 images a second, recording information about every tree its passes. Then the Orchard OS software utilizes AI to build maps with the data collected.

Data-Driven Solutions for Transportation Infrastructure: The Innovation of Cyvl.ai

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In the summer after his freshman year at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, an engineering school in Worcester, Massachusetts, Cyvl.ai co-founder and CEO Daniel Pelaez needed a job. And during my time there, I quickly saw firsthand they had no data on anything,” Pelaez told TechCrunch. He saw an opportunity that would eventually become Cyvl.ai, a firm that helps municipalities and civil engineering firms bring a digital layer to tracking the conditions of transportation infrastructure. “Our core vision and why we started the company in the first place is to help the entire world build and maintain better transportation infrastructure,” he said. The $6 million investment was led by Companyon Ventures with participation from Argon Ventures, AeroX Ventures and Alumni Ventures.

“Snowflake Investment Boosts Observe’s Data Observability Platform with $115M in Funding”

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Observe — not to be confused with Observe.AI — builds observability tools for machine-generated data that aims to break down data silos, useful for developers to understand how apps are working, being used, and potentially failing. The main use case for Observe today is to analyze data to troubleshoot when an application is not working as it should be. It’s very permissive.” The company today works with third-parties to enhance that work but he doesn’t rule out native applications in these and other areas down the line. “We see it as a lever to unlock new customers,” he said of the investment thesis of Snowflake Ventures. [In data,] there is nothing that competes with Observe right now,” Williams added.

“Boosting Pharma Access to Quality Patient Data: Century Health Secures $2M Investment for Innovative AI Integration”

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Century Health is a new startup also getting in on the action. “One of the biggest issues around innovation for new treatments is efficient access to good patient data. That data sat around for decades because it takes manual effort to normalize and extract insight from it.”That’s when he teamed up with friend Sanjay Hariharan, a data scientist and applied AI engineer, to form Century Health. For us, that also means as affordably as possible with access to good real-world data.”Now with $2 million pre-seed funding, Century Health will run three to five pilots over the next several months. In addition to the validated technology, another milestone will be to secure early revenue from the pilots, which Century Health can leverage to go after another round of venture capital.

“Databricks’ $10M Investment in DBRX Failed to Surpass GPT-4’s Dominance in AI Generation”

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You could spend it training a generative AI model. See Databricks’ DBRX, a new generative AI model announced today akin to OpenAI’s GPT series and Google’s Gemini. Customers can privately host DBRX using Databricks’ Model Serving offering, Rao suggested, or they can work with Databricks to deploy DBRX on the hardware of their choosing. It’s an easy way for customers to get started with the Databricks Mosaic AI generative AI tools. And plenty of generative AI models come closer to the commonly understood definition of open source than DBRX.

“Elon Musk Announces: AI Chatbot Grok Will be Available for All Premium Subscribers on X Starting This Week”

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Following Elon Musk’s xAI’s move to open source its Grok large language model earlier in March, the X owner on Tuesday said that the company formerly known as Twitter will soon offer the Grok chatbot to more paying subscribers. In a post on X, Musk announced Grok will become available to Premium subscribers this week, not just those on the higher-end tier, Premium+, as before. Previously, Grok was only available to Premium+ subscribers, at $16 per month or a hefty $168 per year. Most notably, Grok has the ability to access real-time X data — something rivals can’t offer. Of course, the value of that data under Musk’s reign may be diminishing if X is losing users.