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Quick Hits
Testing ground: Uber tries store pickup in India.
Speedy skies: Mighty Wind breaks sound barrier.
Off script: Florida man scoops up e-bikes.
Doc dialogue: Acrobat adds AI chat.
Dating diligence: Tinder adds passport IDs.
Nourishing innovation: $45M fund craves food tech.
African ascent: $300M fund targets mid-stage.
First aid: Drones deliver U.K. medical supplies.
Mind control: Neuralink claims milestone.
Biology bot: DeepMind alumni plan biology AI.
Trademark tangle: OpenAI can't register ‘GPT.’
Convo converter: Ex-Twilio VP extracts chat data.
Failure to launch: Startup cuts follow $110M raise.
Sneak peek: Wyze admits camera breach.
Trending Startups
Funding flows to H2O tech
Water tech is flush with cash, matching highs of 2021. Recently funded include: MIT’s Gradiant, which reduces industrial water waste; Arizona-based Source, which extracts water from the atmosphere; and Los Angeles-based Avnos, which captures both carbon dioxide and water from the air.
Unicorns are back
Eleven companies reached unicorn status in January, the highest monthly haul in over a year. Asia dominates the board with 6 companies across China, Singapore, Hong Kong, and India.
‘Encouraging indictors’
Encouraging economic indicators, improving credit conditions, and the upturn in public market performance signal that private market investors may soon be out of the woods, according to a new Pitchbook report.
Creator concerns soar with OpenAI’s latest
“We all laughed in 2022 when Midjourney first came out and said, ‘Oh, that’s cute.’ Now people are losing their jobs to Midjourney.” —creator
Upstarts like Runway and Midjourney compete with Google, Meta, Microsoft-backed OpenAI to perfect instant video generators that worry some creatives. The latest entry is OpenAI’s Sora, which means “sky” in Japanese, and can generate CGI videos worthy of the big screen.
The new search wars?
OpenAI is gunning for Google in search dominance, adding fuel to an already raging talent war. Ex-Googlers helped launch ChatGPT and are now developing search. Anthropic, led by former OpenAI researcher, is also in the mix.
Anthropic perplexes competition
Anthropic hauled in an impressive $7.3B last year from the likes of Google, Amazon, Salesforce, and a creative special purpose vehicle (SPV). The Claude chatbot is the hottest AI service on AWS, creating distant memories of its FTX connection.
Recently Funded
- Hong Kong's MediConCen Gets $6.85M for Insurance Claims Tech
- Quilter Gets $10M to Simplify Circuit Board Design
- Australia's Diraq Secures $15M for Quantum Computing
- India's Amber Secures $21M for Student Housing
- Scribe Raises $25M to Un-Silo Company Intel
- Monumental Nabs $25M for Bricklaying Robots
- France's Bioptimus Gets $35M to Accelerate Biology Research
- San Francisco’s Meter Lands $35M for Infrastructure
- Bay Area’s Antithesis Raises $47M for Software Testing
Weekly Pulse
62% of execs welcome AI in the workplace
A ‘trust gap’ in AI deployment means leaders and employees both have questions about responsible use and implementation of AI in the workplace. About 6 in 10 business leaders welcome AI’s arrival, while just 52% of employees welcome it, according to a survey from HR software company Workday.
What We’re Reading
Women in AI: Rashida Richardson, senior counsel at Mastercard focusing on AI and privacy (TechCrunch)
Ex-Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer discusses the current tech scene from vantage point of her AI startup (ABC News)
Figma’s CEO on life after the company’s failed sale to Adobe (TheVerge)
The startup founder bootstrapping his creator economy business (Rest of World)
Inside the hunt for new physics at the world’s largest particle collider (MIT)
Post of the Week
Podcasts of the Week
She’s Running a Business, Writing a Book, and Getting a Ph.D.—With ChatGPT (Chain of Thought)
Startups Hiring Now
Captions: Captions is building an AI-powered creative studio | 18 open roles
BlueVine: Empower small businesses with innovative banking designed for them | 55 open roles
Mochi Health: Tele-health for binge-eating disorder and obesity medicine | 15 open roles
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