The Brief - Issue #2

Hello! Welcome to the second edition of The Brief, your weekly 5 min download on AI developments that execs should know about, funding news, and leadership roles on the business side of AI.

NVIDIA, the chipmaker popular with AI companies, saw its stock hit an all-time record high today on the NASDAQ.

DEVELOPMENTS
AI Developments in the past week

• OpenAI launched its much awaited GPT store, where subscribers can create and use custom ChatGPT-powered bots (no coding skills necessary)

• In the recent YCombinator W24 kickoff, Sam Altman (Co-Founder & CEO, OpenAI and former President of YC), shared with the cohort that they should build with the mindset that GPT-5 and AGI will be achieved relatively soon

• Microsoft announced Copilot Pro (a new premium subscription for individuals), and shared that it would increase access to Copilot for Microsoft 365 to small & medium businesses

• Volkswagen announced that it will integrate ChatGPT into its vehicles. You’ll now have a car buddy to have conversations with when that friend who promised they’d stay up with you on a road trip inevitably winds up sleeping for 70% of it 😂

• Google Cloud launched new tools for retailers using generative AI to improve online shopping experiences and retail operations

• If you remember the Cambridge Analytica fiasco and the impact social media had on the 2016 election, just imagine the impact AI could have in the 2024 election. OpenAI shared how it’s working to prevent abuse, provide transparency on AI-generated content, and improve access to accurate voting information

• Artifact, the AI-powered personalized news app, launched by Instagram’s cofounders is shutting down a year after its launch citing that the “market opportunity isn’t big enough to warrant continued investment in this way”. When it was launched, the app was seen as a US based alternative to ByteDance’s Toutiao in China. Here’s an article about why Toutiao is so popular by Anu Hariharan, Founder of Avra and former YC Managing Director

• Here’s something to share with your finance team when you want budget approvals for your team’s GenAI subscriptions. A recent study by the National Bureau of Economic Research found that GenAI can boost productivity, increase customer happiness, and result in higher employee retention

FUNDING
Funding in the past week

• 1xtechnologies, developer of AI-enabled industrial robots, raised $100M in Series B funding, with participation from EQT Ventures and Samsung Next (one of their androids, Neo, gives us slender man vibes 🫣)

• Artisight, an AI-powered smart hospital platform which provides virtual care, quality improvement and care coordination solutions, raised $42M in an oversubscribed Series B funding

• Mercor, an HR platform to source, vet, and remunerate employees, raised $3.6M from investors like General Catalyst and Soma Capital

• Peerlogic, AI-driven dental practice technology, raised a $5.56M seed round from investors like Cervin Ventures and Singularity Capital

• NumberEight, which developed a tool to detect the behaviour of device users for advertisers without the use of cookies, raised a $2.7M Pre-Series A round led by ACF Investors

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

JOBS
Leadership roles on the business side of AI

• Senior Go To Market Specialist, Artificial Intelligence IBM

• Strategic Finance Lead OpenAI

• Chief of Staff, Generative AI Scale AI

• VP of Finance Snorkel AI

• Head of Product Design Synthesia

INDUSTRY AT A GLANCE
Mobile apps powered by AI

Artifact might not have been the blockbuster success that Instagram was, but there are still several consumer apps with AI at their core that are going strong. Here are a few to keep on your radar:

• Atmosfy. Taking on the TikToks, Instagrams, Yelps - and even the Google Reviews - of the world, Atmosfy aims to bring a fresh new take to nightlife and restaurant reviews. Similar to TikTok, Atmosfy’s CEO Michael Ebel notes that AI “plays a huge role in the app’s personalization, curation and recommendations”. Atmosfy raised a $12m seed in August of last year, after surpassing one million local businesses on its platform.

• Speak. Although the language learning space is quite crowded, when it comes to mobile apps, most of us only know the sassy Dua Lipa-loving owl of Duolingo. Well that might change if the newest challenger Speak has anything to say about it. Speak is an AI-powered tutor specifically focused on learning language through speaking. It raised a $16m Series B-2 last August, and is backed by the OpenAI Startup Fund.

• Matter. Matter is on a mission to build a better reading app, and to change the way we consume online content. Launched in early 2020, the freemium app startup raised a $7m Series A in 2021 and has thousands of active users paying for its premium product. One popular feature for premium subscribers is the ability to leverage AI to transcribe podcasts and YouTube into text, so you can highlight, search, and annotate text versions of video and audio content.

• Cleo. The London-based AI-powered financial assistant Cleo is on a mission to support Gen Z’s financial health and wellbeing. The Series C startup claims to “turn your complicated financial life into a conversation – the same kind you’d have with a friend”, and so far has raised nearly $140m.

• Youper. Youper is trying to help solve the abundant demand for - and limited supply of - mental healthcare professionals by building a clinically validated AI chatbot that has already supported over two million people. Founded in 2016, Youper remains on many top apps to watch in healthcare lists, and has raised $3.5m (which includes $3m from Goodwater Capital in 2019).

See you next week! If you’ve liked what you’ve read so far, do us a solid and share this with your friends 🌟