Given the frequency with which their developers toss around the phrase “general purpose humanoids,” more attention ought to be paid to the first bit.
After decades of single purpose systems, the jump to more generalized systems will be a big one.
The use of generative AI in robotics has been a white-hot subject recently, as well.
One of the biggest challenges on the road to general purpose systems is training.
The proliferation of multi-purpose systems would take the industry a step closer to general purpose dream.
That’s according to Jonathan Sanders, CEO and co-founder of fledgling Danish startup Light, which exits stealth Wednesday with $13 million in a seed round of funding led by European VC giant Atomico.
The Copenhagen-based startup is reimagining general ledger software from the ground up, replete with AI to cleanse transactional data, while also enabling finance teams to ask plain-English questions and receive straightforward answers from their data.
Enterprise resource planning (ERP) software is king, packing support for CRM (customer relationship management), HR (human resources), project management, and perhaps the most crucial component of all, the general ledger.
And it’s this element of the ERP that Light is focused on dragging into the modern digital era, where AI increasingly rules the roost.
“Our mission is to be the first automated ledger for global companies,” Sanders told TechCrunch.
Powerhouse venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz is promoting Jennifer Li to general partner after six years at the firm.
She’s being tapped to help invest the new $1.25 billion Infrastructure fund managed by longtime a16z general partner Martin Casado.
The Infrastructure fund is part of the fresh $7.2 billion that the Silicon Valley VC giant just raised.
Li has been an investing partner on the Infrastructure team for a while, which means she was already writing checks and taking board seats.
Plus she’s one of only four GPs on the Infrastructure team.
That means there’s a market for a layer between companies and Large Language Models (LLMs) — something companies can use to pick LLMs easily without needing to commit for all time to one platform.
That’s the market Langdock is targeting with its chat interface that sits between LLMs and a company.
“Companies don’t want to have a vendor lock-in on just one of those LLM providers,” Lennard Schmidt, co-founder and CEO of Langdock, told TechCrunch.
In addition to the chat interface, the company also offers security, cloud and on-premises solutions.
In contrast, Langdock’s chat interface works for a broader range of use cases and can be used by any kind of staff.
We’re excited to reveal the complete agenda, packed with keynote stage speakers and interactive roundtable sessions.
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The VC Pitch Blueprint: Strategies for SuccessSara Choi, Partner, Wing Venture CapitalRacing the Clock to $1M In ARR: Best Practices for Learning Fast from Launch PartnersRudina Seseri, Co-Founder and Managing Partner, Glasswing VenturesFinance Fundamentals Before Your First Finance Hire: A Founder’s Guide to Navigating Early Financial DecisionsDan Kang, VP of Finance, MercurySo You Think You Can Pitch?
The United States Department of Justice this morning filed a lawsuit accusing Apple of monopolistic smartphone practices.
Apple swiftly countered by arguing that — if successful — such a suit would inhibit its ability to compete in the crowded smartphone market.
This lawsuit threatens who we are and the principles that set Apple products apart in fiercely competitive markets.
We believe this lawsuit is wrong on the facts and the law, and we will vigorously defend against it.
At the same time, Apple has also been embroiled in lawsuits from Epic Games, challenging its App Store revenue practices.
Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) — often referred to as “strong AI,” “full AI,” “human-level AI” or “general intelligent action” — represents a significant future leap in the field of artificial intelligence.
Huang, however, spent some time telling the press what he does think about the topic.
He suggests that the tests could be a legal bar exam, logic tests, economic tests or perhaps the ability to pass a pre-med exam.
AI hallucination is solvableIn Tuesday’s Q&A session, Huang was asked what to do about AI hallucinations – the tendency for some AIs to make up answers that sound plausible, but aren’t based in fact.
He appeared visibly frustrated by the question, and suggested that hallucinations are solvable easily – by making sure that answers well-researched.
In an unexpected move, Miles Grimshaw announced today that he is rejoining Thrive Capital after working as a general partner at Benchmark for the past three years.
Grimshaw first joined Thrive, a New York-based venture firm that Joshua Kushner founded, in 2013.
He is returning as a general partner.
When joining storied venture firm Benchmark in December of 2020, then-29-year-old Miles Grimshaw became its fifth general partner.
He had similarly joined a team of four other partners at Thrive back in 2013.
GitHub today announced the general availability of Copilot Enterprise, the $39/month version of its code completion tool and developer-centric chatbot for large businesses.
Many teams already keep their documentation in GitHub repositories today, making it relatively easy for Copilot to reason over it.
On top of talking about today’s release, I also asked Dohmke about his high-level thinking of where Copilot is going next.
“Different use cases require different models.
We will continue going down that path of using the best models for the different pieces of the Copilot experience,” Dohmke said.
Of late, one of the most intense ones centers around humanoid robots.
Humanoid robots can, however, now claim a big tech name among their ranks.
Bill Gates this week issued a list of “cutting-edge robotics startups and labs that I’m excited about.” Among the names are three companies focused on developing humanoids.
An endorsement like this might not move the needle too far in the humanoid direction, and Gates is very much not a roboticist.
It is, however, enlightening to see the form factor continue to gain more mainstream legitimacy by the day.
