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.
Big news this week is centered around the AI chip industry. Out in China, Horizon Robotics has raised a massive $600mm series B led by SK China. They’re already backed by Intel and will use the proceeds to continue expanding their capabilities in what’s known to be a very competitive space.
Meanwhile in the U.S., Google Ventures has invested in Lightmatter, an AI chip startup out of Boston. More weekly news can be found below.
The creep factor from China was pretty high this week. To start, ~30 of the brightest young minds in China have been recruited to develop AI weapons for the government. These kids aren’t even in college yet, and are already doing this kind of work. Meanwhile surveillance in the country has reached a new level as the government is now able to identify people based on the way they walk. Looks like hiding your face won’t work anymore. Finally, China revealed an AI news anchor for its state run media. It’s pretty weird and I don’t really know how to interpret this. Other than the awkward lip movements the AI is pretty solid. I see potential for this to become a common fixture for pushing propaganda 24/7 (since AI doesn’t need a break like us obviously), but hopefully I’m proven wrong.
Quite an interesting week in AI. To start, Anthony Levandowski is rumored to be back in the game through Kache.ai, an autonomous trucking startup. This comes after the infamous legal headaches he created for Waymo and Uber’s autonomous vehicle programs. In China, Baidu had a very busy week adding Daimler trucks to Project Apollo, which… Read More »
One industry that AI is already having an enormous impact on is the logistics industry. As such, I’ve decided to pursue a series of posts relating to four main areas of logistics being impacted by AI. These areas are 1. Truckload shipping 2. Air / drone shipping 3. Maritime shipping and 4. Rail freight shipping. This first article will focus on truckload shipping. I’ll provide a quick overview of the trucking industry, my thoughts on the top use cases of AI in the industry, and highlight AI startups tackling these use cases.