What’s happened in AI: June 24th-30th
Relatively slow week in the AI world. Major highlights include Uber’s acquisition of Mighty AI and Argo AI funding a $15mm research center at Carnegie Mellon. More weekly news below.
Tag Archives: Apple
What’s happened in AI: June 3rd-9th
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.
What’s happened in AI: April 22nd-28th
Relatively slow week in the AI world. Big news comes from Coursera, who raised a $103mm Series E round. The education tech startup has attracted a lot of attention in the past few years and plans to use the proceeds to further expand internationally.
What’s happened in AI: April 15th-21st
We’ve seen two sides of Microsoft over the past two weeks. Last week, we learned that Microsoft was working with a Chinese military university on AI. This week, we learned they declined to sell their facial recognition technology to California law enforcement. While encouraging to hear given the current privacy and civil rights violations associated with many facial recognition technologies, the fact that they’re operating in China on this topic should still leave us all concerned. More weekly news can be found below.
What’s happened in AI: April 1st-7th
Big news this week for Apple, who poached one of Google’s top AI minds. Dr. Ian Goodfellow decided to leave his role as “Senior Staff Research Scientist” with Google to join Apple as a “Director of Machine Learning” in the company’s Special Projects Group. Dr. Goodfellow is best known as being the “father” of GANs. Given Apple’s AR focus this hire makes a lot of sense. As for Google, in addition to losing Dr. Goodfellow, they decided to shut down their AI ethics committee after only a week. That was quick… Other weekly news can be found below.
What’s happened in AI: January 28th-February 3rd
It’s pretty clear autonomous vehicles are one of the most important areas within AI. This week we saw yet another Apple employee get in trouble with the FBI for stealing company secrets on its autonomous vehicle program. Bold move given someone has already been caught before, in addition to the publicity surrounding Anthony Levandowski’s exit from Waymo.
Other weekly news can be found below.
What’s happened in AI: January 21st-27th
Lots of M&A this week in the AI world with Termset (NLP), Textkernel (recruiting), and Crunchbot (chatbots) all being acquired. Many enterprises are finding out that sometimes it’s easier to acquire AI talent than develop it in-house, especially if it’s outside of a particular domain of expertise for the acquirer.
Other news this week includes a few developments in the autonomous vehicle world. Waymo is set to test driverless cars out in Michigan, while Apple cut 200 jobs in its autonomous vehicle division (Project Titan). Not sure what’s going on with Apple, but it’s definitely not the best sign as competitors ramp up research, investment, and personnel additions.
What’s happened in AI: January 7th-13th
Extremely busy week in the AI world, particularly because of the 2019 annual CES conference. Lots of companies announced new product developments, partnerships, and investment in their AI strategy.
One of the biggest CES developments came from Xiaomi, who announced a $1.5bn investment in AI and smart devices. The recently IPO’d tech company is looking to expand aggressively, likely driven in part from the Chinese stock market’s recent sell off. Other weekly news can be found below.