The Brief - Issue #1

Welcome to The Brief, our weekly newsletter for execs. We know this is your first time hearing from us in awhile - you previously signed up via our website (Execs in Tech)

We wanted to build a place where execs can figure out the next steps in their career, and we’ve decided to start out with roles on the business side of AI. Every week, we’ll bring you curated AI developments, funding news, and the hottest jobs. 2024 has just started but there’s already loads of developments in the space.

NEWS
AI Developments in the past week

• Intel has launched a new generative AI company called “Articul8 AI” (pronounced Articulate). Building off a proof-of-concept that Intel had developed for the Boston Consulting Group (BCG), Articul8 AI targets enterprises and enables companies to build, deploy and manage enterprise-grade, secure GenAI applications. We can see why this would be appealing for companies in highly regulated sectors. Articul8 AI, backed by investors like DigitalBridge Group, will be led by Dr. Arun Subramaniyan, Intel’s former VP for Cloud & AI business.

• Amazon is now using AI to help you find the perfect fit for your clothes. It launched four AI-powered features: personalized size recommendations, review highlights, re-imagined size charts, and fit insights. Coresight Research estimates that the average return rate of online apparel orders in the US alone is 24.4%, which translates to about $38 billion in returns. Makes sense that Amazon has rolled out these new features, and we expect more retailers will follow suit.

• Google’s Deep Mind has launched multiple research projects to build robots for real-world activities. It introduced three models: AutoRT (a system that harnesses the potential of large foundation models to better train robots) , SARA-RT (to make robotics transformers leaner and faster), and RT-Trajectory (to help robots generalize and understand “how to do” tasks, providing visual hints during training). If the idea of robots controlled by AI gives you pause, Google has assured that DeepMind will include the Robot Constitution (inspired by Isaac Asimov’s three laws of robotics) - a set of safety-focused prompts to abide by when selecting tasks for the robots.

• Researchers at Microsoft and the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) are using AI to accelerate scientific discovery in battery technology, and shared that they’ve found a way to reduce lithium in batteries by 70%.

• Samsung teases the unveiling of GalaxyAI at the upcoming Galaxy Unpacked event on 17 January 2024. We personally love that they included old models of their phones in this ad. Ah, nostalgia!

• Rabbit just unveiled the r1, an AI-powered assistant that learns whatever digital errands you teach it. While the bright orange handheld device reminds us - and a large portion of the millennial crowd on Twitter - of Tamagotchi, could this be the next wave of pocket-sized hardware that all of us carry? Its Founder & CEO, Jesse Lyu thinks that it could make us break away from app-based operating systems currently used by smartphones, and envisions a natural language centered approach. Check out this launch keynote.

FUNDING
What funding winter?

• Shield AI, an aerospace and defence technology company, expanded their Series F rounding it to $500M. A $100M equity at the Series F price, and $200M in debt from Hercules capital were added to the $200M equity raised in November 2023

• Quora, the Q&A website, raised $75M from a16z to accelerate the growth of Poe, its AI chat platform

• Perplexity AI, an AI-powered search engine that offers a chatbot-like interface that allows users to ask questions in natural language, has raised a $73.6 million Series B round, with participation from investors including IVP, NEA, Databricks Ventures, Nvidia, and Jeff Bezos

• Harvey, which builds LLMs for law firms, raised a $80M Series B, backed by VCs like Kleiner Perkins, OpenAI, and Sequoia

• Nabla, creator of the Nabla Copilot which automatically generates clinical notes, reducing stress and improving patient care, raised a $24M Series B round from investors like Cathay Innovation and ZEBOX ventures

• Luma, the company that builds multimodal AI that can create 3D models, raised a $43M Series B round backed by a16z and South Park Commons

For a list of all the companies that have raised funding in the past 3 months, check out our funding database! The password is EITreaders

If you’d like to share the database with your friends, share this link: https://www.execsintech.com/funding-database 

HOT JOBS
Leadership roles on the business side of AI

• Principal Product Manager, Search Relevance and Quality, Central AI Atlassian

• Head of Growth Kickoff

• Senior Director, Digital Innovation & Owned Channels Prosper Marketplace

• Director, Global Accounts Scale AI

• Director, Product-Led Growth Scorpion

INDUSTRY AT A GLANCE
AI in the legal industry

In light of Harvey’s recent $80M Series B funding, we thought it would be a good time to take a look at how AI is being used to reshape the legal industry.

Here are a few other up-and-coming companies that are using AI to support legal professionals:

• Eve is an AI-powered platform designed to handle legal tasks like document review, case analysis, client intake and research. Eve emerged from stealth last October with $14 million in funding from Lightspeed Ventures

• LegalMation uses generative AI to help legal professionals to respond to legal matters such as lawsuits and discovery requests based on the client's historical responses. LegalMotion raised $15 million in October

• Lex Machina provides AI-generated complaint summaries for district court case pages. The summaries surface the nature of the case, plaintiff and defendant information, alleged harm, and requested remedies to save hours of research time, identify client impacts, and increase business development opportunities. Lex Machina raised $4.8 million in May of last year

• Darrow uses an AI-based data engine to ingests large amounts of publicly available documents and search for violations with class action litigation potential. Darrow is a Y Combinator alum (W21 batch), and most recently raised $35 million last September

Naturally, applying AI to the legal space requires prudence. Tech company DoNotPay, dubbed “the world’s first robot lawyer”, planned to roll out a courtroom product in early 2023 but had to change course following “threats from State Bar prosecutors”. DoNotPay has also faced lawsuits for providing AI-enabled legal services without having a license to practice law, but recently beat one of the cases against them.

Whew, what a week! If you’ve enjoyed this newsletter, share it with your friends! 🌟