What do you do when you have a talented team but no chance to compete against better scaled competitors? You sell and move on. Looks like this is the situation Drive.ai finds itself in as it’s rumored to be in talks with Apple to be acquired.
I‘m personally a huge fan of Drive.ai. They were one of two startups I pitched in my AI VC thesis a few years ago (the other one being Netra). My thesis on them held true, as I said they were a strong candidate to be acquired by a self-driving player who felt “behind the game”, which Apple very much is. With that being said the return early stage investors are getting likely isn’t great as this will be an acqui-hire and Drive.ai was looking for a buyer for 6 months (not the best sign). Regardless, I wish the team the best of luck in their next adventure. More weekly news below.
Company developments:
Microsoft deletes massive facial recognition data set – Jun. 8, 2019 (TechSpot)
- First published in 2016, Microsoft’s “MS Celeb” data set held over 10 million images of almost 100,000 people. The compendium was used by researchers and private companies to train facial recognition technology, but following an investigation by the Financial Times, Microsoft has now deleted it
Self-driving delivery van startup Gatik AI comes out of stealth with Walmart partnership – Jun. 6, 2019 (TechCrunch)
- Gatik AI, an autonomous vehicle startup that came out of stealth Thursday with $4.5 million in funding and Walmart as a customer, is aiming for the sweet middle spot in the world of logistics
- The company, which operates out of Palo Alto and Toronto, isn’t deploying autonomous delivery bots built for sidewalks, nor is it aiming for self-driving trucks, or even robotaxis to shuttle around people. Instead, the founders of Gatik AI are developing a business that will do short hauls of goods between businesses using autonomous light-commercial trucks and vans
Robo-deliveries are now a reality in China – Jun. 3, 2019 (Star Online)
- A Chinese startup called Neolix kicked off mass production of its self-driving delivery vehicles over a week ago – saying it’s the first company globally to do so – and has lined up giants such as JD.Com Inc and Huawei Technologies Co as customers. Neolix expects to deliver a thousand of the vehicles, which resemble tiny vans, within the first year as it broadens out
- “Driverless cars will change the world, just like the shift from the carriage to the automobile,” Neolix founder Yu Enyuan, 45, said in an interview at his office in Beijing. “I have been looking for something that is worth fighting with everything I have and what I am doing now is that.”
M&A:
Apple reportedly exploring acqui-hire of self-driving startup Drive.ai – Jun. 6, 2019 (TechCrunch)
- Apple is potentially seeking to acquire Silicon Valley autonomous driving startup Drive.ai, according to a new report from The Information. The report describes the acquisition as in process, and says it will be an “acqui-hire,” which means its primary goal is to bring in the talent of Drive.ai — with presumably special focus on the engineering talent of the self-driving tech company
- Drive.ai got its start in 2016, founded by a crack team of graduates from Stanford’s AI lab. It focused originally on building out not only the functional autonomy of driving systems, but also intelligent communications systems that would help self-driving vehicles better integrate with existing human drivers and pedestrians
Twitter acquires Fabula AI, a machine learning startup that helps spot fake news – Jun. 3, 2019 (VentureBeat)
- Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but the acquisition will underpin a research group at Twitter led by Sandeep Pandey that will work toward finding new ways to leverage machine learning across natural language processing (NLP), recommendations systems, reinforcement learning, and graph deep learning. The group will also address ML ethics
- “Fake news” has become an umbrella buzzword to describe the deliberate spread of misinformation, but Fabula AI is really about helping identify the authenticity of any information that circulates on social media — regardless of intent. Studies have shown that false news spreads faster than real news online, a pattern that can be used to help spot misinformation. This is what Fabula focuses on: detecting differences in how content is spreading on social media and allocating an authenticity score
Fundraising / investment:
Spacemaker raises $25 million to power urban construction projects with AI – Jun. 9, 2019 (VentureBeat)
- Spacemaker today announced a $25 million round of funding co-led by Atomico and Northzone, with participation from a host of industry investors, including Nordic property developers NREP and Obos — which also happen to be Spacemaker clients — and U.K. real estate tech fund Round Hill Ventures
- Founded out of Oslo in 2016, Spacemaker has created simulation software that manages the computational side of designing structural layouts in multi-building residential developments, allowing architects and designers to focus on the creative side. Input the numbers and various parameters surrounding regulations and other project requirements, and Spacemaker can spit out hundreds of options within a few hours
Megvii is reconsidering its IPO timing as trade war extends – Jun. 6, 2019 (TechNode)
- Alibaba-backed Chinese AI facial recognition startup Megvii is rethinking its plans for an initial public offering in Hong Kong later this year, the FT reported citing anonymous bankers and investors. It had been targeting raising as much as $1 billion. As the US-China trade war escalates and the tech industry finds itself increasingly in the eye of the cyclone, Megvii’s future relationship with the US are uncertain
- The company’s main business is surveillance and security, and it is a key supplier of China’s surveillance systems. Amid a backlash against the country’s use of such technologies, Megvii is reportedly being considered for the US’s entity list, which would block business from the world’s largest economy. The company sees this as “unhelpful speculation,” but tech sector bankers told the FT that as a result, the company will at least have a hard time convincing the Hong Kong stock exchange to accept their listing
Realeyes raises $12.4 million to help brands detect emotion using AI on facial expressions – Jun. 6, 2019 (VentureBeat)
- Artificial emotional intelligence, or “emotion AI,” is emerging as a key component of the broader AI movement. The general idea is this: It’s all very well having machines that can understand and respond to natural-language questions, and even beat humans at games, but until they can decipher non-verbal cues such as vocal intonations, body language, and facial expressions, humans will always have the upper hand in understanding other humans
- One of those companies is Realeyes, a company that helps big brands such as AT&T, Mars, Hershey’s, and Coca-Cola gauge human emotions through desktop computers’ and mobile devices’ cameras. The London-based startup, which was founded in 2007, today announced a fresh $12.4 million round of funding from Draper Esprit, the VC arm of Japanese telecom giant NTT Docomo, Japanese VC fund Global Brain, Karma Ventures, and The Entrepreneurs Fund. It follows a $16.2 million series A financing last May
Enflame Completes New Round of Financing with CNY 300 Million – Jun. 6, 2019 (Equal Ocean)
- Enflame (燧原科技), one of China’s artificial intelligence startups, completes its new round of financing with CNY 300 million (USD 43.39 million) on June 6. The funding is led Redpoint China Ventures and followed by Oceanpine Capital, Yunhe Capital, Tencent, Riverhead Capital and ChinaEquity Group. Enflame has closed three rounds of financing totally in more than CNY 600 million (USD 86.77 million)
- Launched in 2018, Enflame focuses on designing new chips for deep learning algorithm training mainly used in cloud data center. The R&D team of Enflame consists of many scientists and experts who have 15-year successful experience on chip design and mass manufacture. Founder Zhao Lidong used to work in AMD, then he served RDA Microelectronics (Nasdaq: RDA) as president, which is a chip designer and manufacturor in China
AllyO raises $45 million for its AI-driven hiring platform – Jun. 5, 2019 (VentureBeat)
- AllyO, a Mountain View, California-based company developing AI-powered job recruitment products, today announced that it’s completed a series B financing round with $45 million in venture capital, contributed largely by Sapphire Ventures and Scale Venture Partners, as well as existing investors Gradient Ventures (Google’s AI fund), Randstad Innovation Fund, Bain Capital Ventures, and Cervin Ventures
- AllyO’s tools tap conversational AI to quickly identify qualified job seekers, automate recruiting processes, and deliver actionable insights to hiring managers. They don’t pigeonhole customers into particular platforms or recruiting flows — rather, AllyO’s tech integrates with existing career pages, job boards, text and post apps, and referrals on LinkedIn, Monster, and Indeed, plus social media networks like Twitter and Facebook and human capital management suites like SAP SuccessFactors and Taleo
Spiro.AI Closes Additional Funding, Expands Executive Team – Jun. 5, 2019 (Yahoo Finance)
- Spiro, the provider of the first and only proactive relationship management platform, announced today it has secured an additional $2.5 million in seed funding, bringing the total seed funding to $7.5m. The additional funding helps Spiro scale more rapidly and invest in its innovative AI and natural language processing technology. As part of this expansion, Kari Hanson has joined as vice president of marketing to build Spiro’s awareness and demand generation engine
- Spiro has doubled its annual recurring revenue (ARR) and is on track to be cash flow positive next year. This growth has been driven by Spiro introducing a new approach to sales automation, called proactive relationship management, that consolidates CRM with telephone and sales enablement into a single, AI-driven platform. Almost 200 customers, including the Robert Weed Corporation, Singtel, and Viveve Medical, have adopted Spiro’s platform
SentinelOne raises $120M for its fully autonomous, AI-based endpoint security solution – Jun. 4, 2019 (TechCrunch)
- SentinelOne, which provides real-time endpoint protection on laptops, phones, containers, cloud services and most recently IoT devices on a network through a completely autonomous, AI-based platform, has raised $120 million in a Series D round — money that it will be using to continue expanding its current business as well as forge into new areas such as building more tools to automatically detect and patch software running on those endpoints, to keep them as secure as possible
- The funding was led by Insight Partners, with Samsung Venture Investment Corporation, NextEquity participating, alongside all of the company’s existing investors, which include the likes of Third Point Ventures, Redpoint Ventures, Data Collective, Sound Ventures and Ashton Kutcher, Tiger Global, Granite Hill and more
Highspot raises $60 million to apply AI to sales enablement – Jun. 4, 2019 (VentureBeat)
- Highspot, which bills itself as an AI-driven sales enablement platform vendor, today announced that it’s secured $60 million in series D financing led by Iconiq Capital, with participation from Sapphire Ventures and existing investors Madrona Venture Group, OpenView, Salesforce Ventures, and Shasta Ventures. CEO Robert Wahbe said the infusion of fresh capital, which doubles Highspot’s total raised to over $120 million following a $35 million series C round last September, comes as the company’s revenue, customer base, and employee count continue to double year-over-year
Clir secures investment to advance its renewable AI service – Jun. 4, 2019 (Wind Power Engineering)
- Canadian renewable energy company, Clir Renewables, has successfully closed an investment round, securing C$1.9 million. The service-as-a-software (SaaS) company has developed a renewable energy AI platform that helps wind-farm owners and operators to maximize production and provides clarity on performance risk for all interested stakeholders
- “It’s exciting times here at Clir,” said Gareth Brown, Clir Renewables CEO. “We secured this bridge financing to put us in a sound financial position to continue to grow the company, globally, and develop our domain-specific AI. It’ll allow us to continue to lower the cost of renewable energy and give us time to find the right Series A investor later this year.”
Fitness startup Mirror nears $300M valuation with fresh funding – Jun. 3, 2019 (TechCrunch)
- Mirror, a New York-based company that sells $1,495 full-length mirrors that double as interactive home gyms, is closing in a round of funding expected to reach $36 million, sources and Delaware stock filings confirm, at a valuation just under $300 million. It’s unclear who has signed on to lead the round; we’ve heard a number of high-profile firms looked at Mirror’s books and passed. The company has previously raised a total of $38 million from Spark Capital, First Round Capital, Lerer Hippeau, BoxGroup and more
- Like Peloton, Mirror is sold for a hefty fee with a subscription to the service’s unlimited live and on-demand workouts that comes at an additional cost. The company hasn’t disclosed subscriber numbers, though The New York Times reported in February the business was selling $1 million worth of Mirrors — or some 650 units — per month
Research / studies:
Researchers show glare of energy consumption in the name of deep learning – Jun. 9, 2019 (TechXplore)
- Their paper is currently attracting attention among tech watching sites. It’s titled “Energy and Policy Considerations for Deep Learning in NLP,” by Emma Strubell, Ananya Ganesh and Andrew McCallum. This, said Karen Hao, artificial intelligence reporter for MIT Technology Review, was a life cycle assessment for training several common large AI models
- Hao reported their findings, that “the process can emit more than 626,000 pounds of carbon dioxide equivalent—nearly five times the lifetime emissions of the average American car (and that includes manufacture of the car itself).”
Stanford researchers develop artificial intelligence tool to help detect brain aneurysms – Jun. 7, 2019 (Stanford News)
- The AI tool, developed by researchers at Stanford University and detailed in a paper published June 7 in JAMA Network Open, highlights areas of a brain scan that are likely to contain an aneurysm
- “There’s been a lot of concern about how machine learning will actually work within the medical field,” said Allison Park, a Stanford graduate student in statistics and co-lead author of the paper. “This research is an example of how humans stay involved in the diagnostic process, aided by an artificial intelligence tool.”
Energy efficient ‘photonic’ chip able to run large optical neural-networks developed at MIT – Jun. 6, 2019 (Computing UK)
- The chip uses light in place of electricity, and simulation tests indicate that it could process massive optical neural networks 10 million times more efficiently than today’s electrical chip-based computers. According to researchers, the new photonic accelerator is scalable to large networks and can be operated at high (gigahertz) speeds and very low (sub-attojoule) energies
Government / policy:
China Launches AI Testbed in Shenzhen – Jun. 5, 2019 (HPC Wire)
- China’s National Supercomputing Center in Shenzhen launched a testbed for artificial intelligence (AI) experiments on Friday. Project officials, cited by Chinese news portal Xinhua, said the AI system, named Tai, supports the research, development and application testing for AI inventions
- “Tai is capable of dealing with large-scale and complex scenarios,” the article reported. “Scientists have built an EB-level intelligent data management and analysis system for high-energy physics, as well as simulation of AI scenarios in real business situations and an AI-powered weather forecast platform.”
NHTSA, FMCSA Issue Pre-Rulemaking Proposals for Autonomous Vehicles – Jun. 3, 2019 (Roads & Bridges)
- Both agencies have stressed that they are only seeking comments at this stage of the rulemaking process in order to “ensure that all potential approaches are fully considered” as they move forward with more declarative regulatory actions
- NHTSA said its rulemaking will address “regulatory barriers” posed by certain existing Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards that might inhibit the wider deployment of vehicles governed by automated driving system or ADS technology