Meta has powerful new tools for real-time language translation
Plus Mistral AI is about raised €450M from a16z, Nvidia, and Salesforce
Today’s Highlights:
📰 News: Meta introduces a suite of AI tools for real time cross-lingual communication and translation
💰 Funding: Mistral AI set to raise €450M from Andreessen Horowitz, Nvidia, and Salesforce
⚡️ Top News Stories:
1. Meta AI introduces Seamless, a system for expressive cross-lingual communication in real-time, built on the SeamlessM4T v2 model
Seamless features two key components: SeamlessExpressive for preserving expression in speech-to-speech translation and SeamlessStreaming for low-latency streaming translation.
The models support a wide range of languages, with SeamlessStreaming offering near real-time translation for nearly 100 input and 36 output languages.
Seamless aims to improve the authenticity of conversations by preserving elements like tone, emotion, and style in translations.
2. Mastercard launches "Shopping Muse," a new generative AI shopping tool designed to provide personalized product recommendations.
3. OpenAI gives employees more time to decide on share sale following CEO Altman's rehiring.
4. OpenAI's COO discusses ChatGPT's impact and future AI directions amidst the company's recent leadership changes.
5. OpenAI agrees to buy $51M in specialized AI chips from Rain AI, a startup backed by CEO Sam Altman
6. Despite AI's hype, an NBC News analysis reveals that only 4.4% of U.S. businesses are actually using AI to produce goods or services.
7. ByteDance, the owner of TikTok, is reportedly preparing to launch a chatbot-building service to rival OpenAI's GPTs.
8. Google's advanced multimodal AI model, Gemini, postponed to 2024 to deal w/ multilingual response challenges.
💰 Top Funding News:
1. Mistral AI, a french AI startup building open-source AI models, is about to complete a funding round of approximately €450M, putting their valuation at about $2Bn. More than €325M will be an equity investment led by Andreessen Horowitz, while €120M will be convertible debt led by Nvidia and Salesforce.
2. CoreWeave, a specialized GPU cloud provider focused on complex and intensive workloads like generative AI and drug discovery, raised a minority investment of $642M, led by Fidelity Management & Research Company, w/ Investment Management Corporation of Ontario (IMCO), Jane Street, J. P. Morgan Asset Management, Nat Friedman & Daniel Gross, Goanna Capital, Zoom Ventures, and others.
3. Seismic Therapeutic, a ML immunology company focused on peptide drug discovery, raised a $121M Series B, led by Bessemer Venture Partners, w/ Amgen Ventures, Codon Capital, Alexandria Venture Investments, Gaingels, and GC&H, Timothy A. Springer, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Polaris Partners, Boxer Capital, GV, Samsara BioCapital, and management and founders.
4. AssemblyAI, which creates superhuman Speech AI models, aiming to unlock a new class of AI applications leveraging voice data, raised a $50M Series C, led by Accel, w/ Keith Block and Smith Point Capital, Insight Partners, Daniel Gross and Nat Friedman, and Y Combinator.
5. Syrup, an AI-powered planning, buying, and inventory optimization platform for omnichannel commerce, raised a $17.5M Series A, led by Accel Partners, w/ Gradient Ventures and 1984 Ventures.
6. Rohirrim, which specializes in domain-aware generative AI for enterprises, raised a $15M Series A, led by Insight Partners, w/ General Purpose Venture Capital.
7. Extropic AI, a novel full-stack paradigm of physics-based computing, raised a $14.1M Seed Round, led by Steve Jang and Kindred Ventures, w/ Buckley Ventures, HOF Capital, Julian Capital, Marque VC, OSS Capital, Valor Equity Partners, Weekend Fund, and several others.
8. ThoughtExchange, an AI-powered engagement and survey platform, raised $13.5M led by InBC Investment Corp., w/ Information Venture Partners, Yaletown Partners, Voyager Capital, HarbourVest, and First Generation Capital.