Welcome to this week's roundup of the top startup funding & news in AI, this week in AI we have stories on:
- NVIDIA releases new AI chip, Blackwell
- Microsoft hires Deepmind co-founder to run new AI division
- Stability AI CEO resigns to pursue decentralized AI
- AI startups raised $331M in venture funding
This Week in AI 🗞️
Here are the top stories to watch in AI last week 👇
NVIDIA's reveals new AI chip
NVIDIA revealed their new Blackwell GPU chip, which offers significant improvements in AI model training and inference capabilities.
- The company also introduced the GB200 "superchip" and expanded its software offerings, including "NIM microservices" to maintain its leading position amid growing competition from companies developing their own AI chips.
- Despite Nvidia's advancements and strategic partnerships, the market's response was muted, reflecting challenges in sustaining high growth and increasing competition in the AI chip industry.
Microsoft hires Deepmind Cofounder, Mustafa Suleyman, to run new AI division
Microsoft hired Mustafa Suleyman, co-founder of DeepMind and former CEO of AI startup Inflection, to lead a new consumer AI unit, consolidating products like Copilot, Bing, and Edge under Microsoft AI.
- Suleyman's move includes the transition of Inflection’s key staff to Microsoft, emphasizing a strategic focus on AI across Microsoft products, with plans to integrate AI more deeply into Windows and enhance Bing with generative AI technologies.
- Amidst regulatory scrutiny over AI investments, Microsoft's organizational shift underlines its ambition to lead in AI innovation and application, aiming to democratize AI benefits while navigating competitive and regulatory landscapes.
Stability AI CEO resigns to pursue decentralized AI
Emad Mostaque resigned as CEO of Stability AI, the company behind Stable Diffusion, to focus on decentralized AI.
- Mostaque's departure follows the resignation of key developers and occurs alongside significant talent moves to Microsoft from Inflection AI, signaling turbulence in the AI startup sector.
- Stability AI, known for its text-to-image generation tools and facing legal challenges over its training data, is shifting towards commercial AI products amidst leadership changes.
AI Startups Raised $331M Last Week 🚀
Last week, AI startups raised a total of $338M in venture funding, here are a few of our favourite to watch.
Foundry - Raised a $80M Series A Round
- What they do: Foundry is a public cloud supported by an orchestration platform designed to simplify the use of AI computing resources. Foundry addresses fundamental economic and technical obstacles encountered in AI and deep learning. Current challenges faced by businesses, such as the notable GPU scarcity and inefficient use of computing capabilities, hindering their effective utilization of resources.
- Location: Palo Alto, California
Orq.ai - Raised a $2.5M Pre-Seed Round
- What they do: Orq.ai enables companies to integrate and operate their products using the power of Large Language Models through a single collaboration platform. The platform centralizes prompt management, streamlined experimentation, feedback collection, and real-time insight into performance and costs.
- Location: Amsterdam, Netherlands
Lumino - Raised a $2.8M Pre-Seed Round
- What they do: Lumino revolutionizes the AI training process with model development and accountability in the production system, enabling clients to reduce machine learning training costs.
- Location: San Francisco, California
That's it for this edition of This Week in AI. If you were forwarded this newsletter and would like to receive it, you can sign up here.
