Big highlight this week is China Growth Capital’s Wayne Shiong predicting that Chinese AI companies could see their valuations decrease by 30-50%, reflecting signs of a liquidity crunch.
My take is it’s too early to tell if the valuation hits will actually happen. You have to look at it on a macro / political perspective with regards to China. Xi Jingping made an implicit promise to the Chinese people that he would substantially raise the standards of living and increase China’s global economic footprint. In exchange, he’s leader for life (a concept that China hasn’t dealt with since Mao).
The backbone of Xi’s promise is built on the Made in China 2030 AI mandate. With a trade war brewing between China and the U.S., Xi Jingping is in no position to let the Chinese AI sector take any hits. Valuation hits are much more likely to play out long-term if the technology fails to pan out and achieve the standards here in the U.S. But, in the short-term, the government will find a way to funnel money to the private sector who will then continue to invest in AI startups.
Company developments:
Waymo wants to test its self-driving car tech in China – Aug 24, 2018 (CNN)
- The driverless car division of Google’s parent company, Alphabet (GOOGL), has registered a company in Shanghai called Huimo Business Consulting, according to a business registration filing
- The Chinese subsidiary has 3.5 million yuan ($508,000) in capital, lists Waymo as an investor and identifies Waymo CEO John Krafcik as a board member
Driverless vehicle start-up Zoox suddenly fires its CEO – Aug 23, 2018 (LA Times)
- Zoox Inc., an autonomous-driving start-up recently valued at $3.2 billion, has dismissed its chief executive, Tim Kentley-Klay, shortly after closing a massive financing round. Kentley-Klay tweeted that the firing Wednesday came “without a warning, cause or right of reply,” adding that it “was Silicon Valley up to its worst tricks.”
- Jesse Levinson, the company’s other co-founder and current chief technology officer, will be promoted to president, said a person familiar with the decision who asked not to be identified because the discussions are private. The person declined to offer an explanation for the move. Carl Bass, the former CEO of Autodesk and a Zoox board member, was named executive chairman for the company
Lyft’s self-driving taxis have made 5,000 trips for paying riders in Las Vegas – Aug 22, 2018 (Digital Trends)
- Riders in Vegas can opt in to using the driverless service by tapping the option when prompted in the Lyft app. Then, when you request a ride, the service will offer a driverless car if one is available nearby. At this point you have another opportunity to accept or decline the autonomous vehicle. Declining will connect you to a human driver, and the trip will cost the same whatever choice you make
- According to Lyft’s own data, 96 percent of passengers said they intend to take more rides in its robot taxis, while 20 percent have already made several trips in them. The average passenger rating for the experience currently stands at 4.96 out of 5 stars, suggesting the vehicles’ sensors, cameras, and other autonomous equipment is working exactly as it should
Adobe’s marketing tools will soon use AI to predict the best times to send emails – Aug 21, 2018 (TechCrunch)
- The idea here is that marketers only have to give Adobe Campaign, the company’s email marketing tool, a start and end date for their campaign and Sensei will then figure out what’s the best time for that email to land in the recipient’s inbox. It’s no secret that many of these emails simply get lost or ignored, so the tool will optimize for open rates
Fundraising / investment:
China Growth Capital’s Wayne Shiong: Chinese AI Companies May See Valuations Drop By As Much As 50% – Aug 24, 2018 (China Money Network)
- “We expect companies to lower their valuation expectations for the second half of the year. People start to fear whether they can get funding in the private market now (because of tighter liquidity). Everyone is trying to list in the public market before liquidity dries out. A lot of really expensive companies should see their valuation corrected before IPO,” Shiong told China Money Network in an interview last week in Beijing
- The Chinese AI market size stood at RMB23.74 billion (US$3.45 billion) in 2017, representing a 67% increase compared with 2016, according to an AI report by Tsinghua University released in July. Also last year, China’s AI firms attracted US$27.71 billion funding, accounting for 70% of the total fundraising in the industry globally, according to the same report
A new unicorn is born: Root Insurance raises $100 million for a $1 billion valuation – Aug 22, 2018 (TechCrunch)
- Root Insurance, an Ohio-based car insurance startup with a tech twist, said Wednesday it has raised $100 million in a Series D funding round led by Tiger Global Management, pushing the company’s valuation to $1 billion. Redpoint Ventures, Ribbit Capital and Scale Venture Partners all participated as follow-on investors in this latest round
- The car insurance company, founded in 2015, plans to use the funds to expand into existing markets and make inroads into new states, as well as hire more employees such as engineers, actuaries, claims and customer service to support increased scale
Canvass Analytics raises $5M led by Gradient Ventures, Google’s AI fund – Aug 21, 2018 (TechCrunch)
- Canvass Analytics, an AI-based predictive analytics platform that helps streamline industrial operations, announced today that it has raised $5 million in funding led by Gradient Ventures, Google’s AI investment fund. Bedrock Industries, Viaduct Ventures and returning investors Real Ventures and Barney Pell also participated
- This brings Canvass’ total raised so far to $7.5 million. The Toronto-based startup tells TechCrunch that the new capital will be used to pursue “aggressive sales growth,” with expanded account and technical sales teams in North America, the European Union and Asia, with the goal of signing up more Fortune 500 companies
Holden’s $28m jobs and tech boost to get driverless cars moving – Aug 21, 2018 (9 news)
- Holden will become a global hub for the development of autonomous technology and electric vehicles, through a new $28 million investment announced today by parent company General Motors
- The new project will also add 150 new engineering and design jobs at Holden’s Port Melbourne facility. Half the new recruits will start this year, with the remainder to join the workforce by mid-2019
Partnerships:
Autonomous taxi trial carrying passengers begins in Tokyo – Aug 27, 2018 (The Mainichi)
- ZMP Inc., a Tokyo-based developer of autonomous driving technology, and Hinomaru Kotsu Co., said they are the first in the world to offer autonomous taxi services to fare-paying passengers in the test through Sept. 8.
- In the trial by ZMP and Hinomaru, a minivan equipped with sensors and other autonomous technologies makes four round-trips a day on a busy 5.3-kilometer route between commercial facilities in Tokyo’s Otemachi and Roppongi districts
Yokogawa and NAIST Jointly Develop Reinforcement Learning Algorithm Applicable to Automatic Optimization of Plant Operations – Aug 22, 2018 (Newswire Today)
- Over the years, Yokogawa has provided control systems to a wide range of industries, including oil, gas, chemicals, iron and steel, pulp and paper, pharmaceuticals, and food, and has acquired a wealth of technologies and expertise related to plant operations
- NAIST, on the other hand, has been engaged in the research and development of ML-based techniques such as probabilistic inference as well as system engineering techniques such as optimization control and reinforcement learning, while aiming to develop intelligent robots and systems that are capable of carrying out specific functions in a dynamic environment
IIT-Mandi, US firm tie up for artificial intelligence – Aug 20, 2018 (The Tribune)
- An IIT-Mandi team is also planning to work closely with Rx-Data Science Inc to apply deep-learning methods and cognitive algorithms for discovering patterns among patient journeys and social ties among physicians
- Varun Dutt, Assistant Professor, School of Computing and Electrical Engineering, IIT Mandi, said, “Data sciences in India are at a very nascent stage, but in the United States, most healthcare and pharmaceutical companies have moved onto the consulting stage wherein live cases are debated online by doctors and medical practitioners’ community. He said India was at the helm of a healthcare boom given that the Government of India had hiked health spending by 11 per cent with a gross budgetary allocation of Rs 1,200 crore for opening more hospitals
Facebook and NYU want to speed up MRI scans tenfold with AI – Aug 20, 2018 (VentureBeat)
- Facebook AI Research is working with NYU School of Medicine to make MRI scans up to 10 times faster through artificial intelligence. AI models being used in the fastMRI project were trained by 3 million MRI scans of the brain, knee, and liver from 10,000 clinical cases obtained by NYU
- The goal of making MRIs 10 times faster was arrived at because that’s the speed teams at NYU and Facebook think is needed to deliver substantial benefits and move this research to clinical practice and mass adoption. Initial results from the effort will be released within the year, a Facebook spokesperson told VentureBeat in an email
Udacity Partners with WorldQuant to Offer AI for Trading Nanodegree – Aug 19, 2018 (ELearning News)
- On Thursday, Udacity announced a new AI-based Nanodegree. Developed in partnership with WorldQuant, an international asset management firm, “Artificial Intelligence for Trading” will help learners bring machine learning to financial trading
- The course comprises of two three-month terms. The first begins by laying a foundation in quantitative analysis, a financial practice that typically involves massive data sets compiling price, volume, and other metrics. Once the first term is complete, learners will move on to applying AI algorithms to trading
Research / studies:
Ford Releases Safety Assessment Report on Autonomous Vehicles – Aug 24, 2018 (Wheels.ca)
- The 44-page document, titled “A Matter of Trust,” details Ford’s approach and ranking of safety during its self-driving vehicle development, as well as how the company is working closely with industry and various government partners. Leading to how to apply the technology to solve the challenges our cities will face
IBM researchers propose ‘factsheets’ for AI transparency – Aug 22, 2018 (VentureBeat)
- There’s no consistent, agreed-upon way AI services should be “created, tested, trained, deployed, and evaluated,” Aleksandra Mojsilovic, head of AI foundations at IBM Research and codirector of the AI Science for Social Good program, today said in a blog post. Just as unclear is how those systems should operate, and how they should (or shouldn’t) be used
CDRF and Sequoia China publish report on human capital investment in the AI era – Aug 22, 2018 (PR Newswire)
- The report is the first ever comprehensive policy research product released in China that focuses on the impact of AI on the Chinese job market
- The report predicts that developments in AI will propel the knowledge economy further, creating enormous opportunities for productivity improvements while posing great challenges to the economy and society. The knowledge economy powered by AI will differ from a traditional economy structurally in terms of resources, costs, market, economy, employment, distribution and trade. As China’s rapidly ageing society and declining birth rates will threaten its future economic and social development, the emergence of AI holds great potential in addressing labor supply issues in certain sectors, such as in the mid- and high-end service industry, and will play a crucial role in alleviating the effects of a dwindling labor force
Government / policy:
City of Vancouver prepares for driverless cars in 2040 Transportation Plan – Aug 26, 2018 (CBC)
- The city received a funding commitment of $386,000 from the federal government a couple of weeks ago to study the future of driverless vehicles, part of Transport Canada’s program to advance connectivity and automation in the transportation system
New facial recognition tech at US airport leads to first arrest – Aug 24, 2018 (CNET)
- A 26-year-old man showed a French passport upon arrival from Sao Paulo, Brazil, but the software flagged his face as not matching the passport photo, the CBP said
- He was questioned, and a search revealed his real ID — from the Republic of Congo — in his shoe. CBP said it was the first time an impostor had been caught using this tech, which had only been in use there since Monday
Events:
AI and machine learning take centre stage at Microsoft’s student developer competition – Aug 24, 2018 (ZD Net)
- Around 40% of the entries in the entire competition had AI-based solutions, and the proportion was even higher in the 49 finalists. Only ten of the projects didn’t specifically talk about using image recognition, speech recognition, machine learning, deep learning or other AI techniques (and that doesn’t mean they weren’t using them)
- Some of them used Microsoft’s Cognitive Services, like the Face API, text analytics, speech to text and custom vision. But just as many had built their own machine learning models, either in the AzureML service or using open source frameworks like TensorFlow, for everything from monitoring bee hives to classifying the taste of coffee to checking whether a pineapple is ripe
Houston symposium to explore AI, machine learning in upstream oil and gas – Aug 21, 2018 (World Oil)
- The 2018 Oil and Gas Machine Learning Symposium will host data scientists, geoscientists, engineers, asset managers and exploration managers at a world-class event on September 27, 2018, at the Royal Sonesta in Houston, Texas. The symposium will explore developments and applications of AI and machine learning to upstream. Speakers include thought-leaders from companies that are pioneering these technologies, including Amazon, Anadarko, Geophysical Insights, IBM, Microsoft, Nvidia, Shell, Repsol, TGS, and others