Company developments:
Siemens Unveils Simulation Tool for Testing of Autonomous Vehicles – May. 24th, 2019 (Design News)
- Known as PAVE360, the new tool allows developers to design and test an autonomous vehicle system-on-chip (SoC) and its surrounding electronic components in a completely virtual environment. “We don’t just model the analog or electromechanical systems,” noted David Fritz, global technology manager for Siemens AG. “We actually model the silicon itself, and then go from the silicon to the ECU, and from the ECU to multiple ECUs, and then through the network, all the way out to the entire vehicle. And we do that within a virtual representation of the world.”
M&A:
Scaleworks acquires AI ecommerce search provider SearchSpring – May. 23rd, 2019 (Venture Beat)
- Scaleworks isn’t your typical venture company. The San Antonio-based private equity firm acquires startups with between $4 million and $10 million in annual run rate (ARR) and works to grow them, while additionally extending 12- to 16-month venture loans to B2B businesses as much as 6 times their monthly recurring revenue. Scaleworks bought eight companies with its first $60 million fund, which collectively grew 52% to $80 million in revenue last year
Fresh off a $530M round, Aurora acquires lidar startup Blackmore – May. 23rd, 2019 (TechCrunch)
- Aurora, the self-driving car startup backed by Sequoia Capital and Amazon, is in an acquiring mood. The company, founded in early 2017 by Chris Urmson, Sterling Anderson and Drew Bagnell, announced Thursday that it acquired lidar company Blackmore
- The Blackmore purchase follows another smaller, and previously unknown, acquisition of 7D Labs that occurred earlier this year, TechCrunch has learned. 7D, founded by former software engineer from Pixar animation Magnus Wrenninge, is a simulation startup that makes photorealistic synthetic data sets for street scenes. Aurora confirmed the acquisition
Fundraising / investment:
Hunters.ai raises $5.4M for its autonomous threat-hunting solution – May. 23rd, 2019 (TechCrunch)
- The Hunters team tells me that it did a lot of market validation before deciding on its focus. “The main gap we saw is the level of talent, experience and understanding of the attack side inside of organizations,” Hunters CEO Uri May told me. “This led us to develop what we call the autonomous threat-hunting machine, which is taking our understanding of what threat hunting is and to take that to a lot of customers around the world in a scalable way.”
People.ai, the predictive sales startup, raises $60M at around $500M valuation – May. 21st, 2019 (TechCrunch)
- People.ai, which has built a platform to ingest all the data that salespeople generate in the course of their work, and then use it to provide guidance to them to help source and close more deals, is today announcing that it has raised another $60 million in funding, which it will use to continue growing the business and building partnerships with new channels, such as system integrators to target bigger enterprises
- The startup is not disclosing its valuation, but sources tell us it is around $500 million — specifically in the “mid-nine-figures.” The big number is partly the result of the startup’s strong growth so far: It has already ingested 350 million sales activities, 40 million contacts, a sales pipeline of $300 billion and $100 billion in closed and won deals. Its revenues have been growing 5X year-over-year, with customers squarely so far in the tech camp that surrounds the San Francisco-based startup. They include Red Hat, Lyft, Zoom, New Relic and Splunk.
Tencent, Pearson Among Backers of $100 Million U.K. AI Startup – May. 20th, 2019 (Bloomberg)
- Prowler.io, an artificial intelligence company based in Cambridge, England, has been valued at $100 million following a funding round involving a group of investors that includes Chinese technology giant Tencent Holdings Ltd. and Pearson Plc
- Prowler said it’s receiving $24 million in new funding and that Tencent led the investment round with participation from Pearson and others including Amadeus Capital Partners, Atlantic Bridge, Cambridge Innovation Capital, Mandatum Life, Passion Capital, RB Capital and Singapore Innovate
City simulator wins venture capital backing as investors seek driverless car exposure – May. 20th, 2019 (Reuters)
- Venture capital investors backed Immense Simulations, a British software company which creates interactive replicas of cities, on Tuesday in the latest sign of money pouring into firms that stand to gain from driverless vehicles becoming more mainstream
- Immense Simulations raised $4.6 million in its Series A funding round co-led by British venture capital firm Amadeus Capital Partners and Japan’s Global Brain Corporation
Clinc raises over $50 million to bring conversational AI to cars, banks, and kiosks – May. 20th, 2019 (VentureBeat)
- Clinc, a four-year-old AI startup based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, today announced that it’s secured $52 million in series B financing led by Insight Partners, with participation from DFJ Growth and existing investors Drive Capital and Hyde Park Venture Partners. The mammoth round is over eight times the size of the company’s $6.3 million series A in February 2017, and Clinc claims it’s one of the largest single investments in the history of conversational AI
- Investors were seemingly won over by Clinc’s growth, which is nothing to shake a stick at, to be sure. Last year, the firm saw a 300% uptick in revenue and expects to more than triple business this year. And Clinc claims its technologies are accessible to over 30 million users via customers such as USAA, Ford, İşbank, Barclays, and others in verticals such as automotive, health care, travel, hospitality, banking, customer service, insurance, and food service
Partnerships:
MIT and U.S. Air Force launch AI accelerator program – May. 20th, 2019 (VentureBeat)
- MIT, one of the most prominent artificial intelligence research organizations in the United States, is developing an AI accelerator program for the U.S. Air Force. The accelerator will explore research related to areas like advanced algorithms, machine learning, and robotics, as well as logistics and data
- The Air Force plans to commit $15 million a year to the program, according to an announcement shared today. The program will be housed in MIT’s Beaver Works facility but may include faculty, staff, or students from all five colleges, including MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) and groups like MIT’s Robotics team
Research / studies:
Researchers can now use AI and a photo to make fake videos of anyone – May. 25th, 2019 (Fox2Now)
- Researchers have come up with a method for creating realistic-looking — but fake — videos of anyone by using just a single image of them with a trained artificial intelligence system. It’s a potentially worrisome capability in the runup to the 2020 United States presidential election, as falsified videos of candidates are expected to spread
Cambridge study finds driverless cars working together can speed up traffic by 35% – May. 20th, 2019 (Green Car Congress)
- Starting with inexpensive scale models of commercially-available vehicles with realistic steering systems, the Cambridge researchers adapted the cars with motion capture sensors and a Raspberry Pi, so that the cars could communicate via WiFi
- They then adapted a lane-changing algorithm for autonomous cars to work with a fleet of cars. The original algorithm decides when a car should change lanes, based on whether it is safe to do so and whether changing lanes would help the car move through traffic more quickly. The adapted algorithm allows for cars to be packed more closely when changing lanes and adds a safety constraint to prevent crashes when speeds are low. A second algorithm allowed the cars to detect a projected car in front of it and make space
Government / policy:
U.S. Senators propose legislation to fund national AI strategy – May. 21st, 2019 (VentureBeat)
- U.S. Senators Rob Portman (R-OH), Martin Heinrich (D-NM), and Brian Schatz (D-HI) today proposed the Artificial Intelligence Initiative Act, legislation to pump $2.2 billion into federal research and development and create a national AI strategy
- The legislation would establish a National AI Coordination Office to lead federal AI efforts, require the National Science Foundation (NSF) to study the effects of AI on society and education, and allocate $40 million a year to NIST to create AI evaluation standards