Thanks to Uber’s S-1 filing we have new insight on their investment activities surrounding autonomous vehicles. Last year they spent over $450mm on autonomous vehicles, and ~$1bn in total over the past three years. Quite a big bet they’re making and it will be interesting to see how they stack up against Lyft in the future. Other weekly news can be found below.
Big news this week for AI M&A with McDonald’s acquiring an Israeli AI startup for $300mm and Daimler Trucks acquiring an autonomous truck startup for an undisclosed amount. For those interested in reading more about the autonomous truck industry, take a look at one of my earlier posts on the industry. I expect to see a lot more M&A activity going forward.
Interesting week in the AI world. In the U.S., top executives at Google met with top U.S. military generals to discuss Google’s work with China on AI research. Can’t help but notice that Google might be singled out here given Project Maven (Microsoft, Amazon and other U.S. tech giants also have AI operations in China).
Meanwhile, on the IPO front Megvii is looking to IPO later this year at an ~US$800mm valuation. As one of the top facial recognition startups in the world in the biggest facial recognition market (China), I’d flag this as one of the top IPOs in 2019 to watch.
Most of us could infer that large scale autonomous vehicle programs were capital intensive. With that being said, the recent news of Uber’s $20 million a month burn rate for its autonomous vehicle program must have caught a lot of us by surprise. With that amount of money they might as well pursue 1 or 2 acquisitions to help accelerate progress. Other weekly news can be found below.
Lots of great healthcare developments stemming from AI this week. Researchers from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California (USC) published data on a novel machine-learning framework they developed that distinguishes between low- and high-risk prostate cancer with more precision than ever before.
On the fundraising side, KenSci raised $22mm to progress their AI-driven prediction platform that helps practitioners cut costs intelligently by identifying contributing clinical and financial factors and by analyzing data across various sources like electronic medical records, public records, demographics, claims data, and devices.
The AI research capabilities of Microsoft continue to expand. This week they opened two separate AI labs in China.
The first will be located in Nanchang city and will focus on VR in addition to AI applications in established manufacturing companies. The second will be located in Shanghai and will focus on IoT in addition to AI. It’s clear Microsoft has gained favor with the Chinese government as these are two major developments with regards to their China strategy.
Last weekly update for 2018. Thanks to all the readers and visitors here. Let’s all hope for continued positive progress in the AI world in the new year.
Some end of the year AI blues for the U.S. gov’t. Recent reports have indicated the Pentagon is concerned the U.S. is losing its AI advantage to China and Europe. Democratic lawmakers also pushed back against a compromise bill for self-driving vehicles. Will be interesting to see how legislature approaches AI in 2019. My guess is it will slip again, but hopefully I’m proven wrong.