The Brief - Issue #6

Welcome to another issue of The Brief!

There is such a thing as going too far with AI generated advertisements, especially when it’s far from reality - as ticket holders of a Willy Wonka event in Glasgow found out 🍭 It’s now dubbed their very own Fyre Festival 👀

DEVELOPMENTS
AI Developments in the past week

• OpenAI launched Sora, its text to video model that creates vivid, realistic videos

• Reddit (which recently filed for an IPO) signed a content licensing deal with Google for $60M / year that allows Google to train its models using Reddit’s content

• Klarna shared that its AI assistant has had 2.3 million conversations in a month (two-thirds of Klarna’s customer service chats), or the equivalent of 700 full-time agents

• Slack announced that it is incorporating AI features to serve up summaries of threads and channel recaps

• Softbank Founder Masayoshi Son is looking to raise $100B for an AI chip maker

• Apple is developing an AI tool to compete with Microsoft’s GitHub Copilot

• Microsoft’s AI growth is helping its Azure business chip away at AWS’s lead

FUNDING
Recent AI Funding Activity

• Attentive.ai, a startup building vertical software for landscaping and construction, raised a $7M Series A round with participation from PeakXV’s Surge, InfoEdge Ventures, and Tenacity Ventures

• Bioptimus, which is building the first universal AI foundation model for biology, raised a $35M Seed round. Investors include Bpifrance Large Venture, Sofinnova Partners, and Cathay Innovation

• Ideogram, a Gen AI image creator that actually seems to get text in AI generated images right, raised an $80M Series A round from investors like a16z, Redpoint Ventures, and Pear VC

• Lambda Labs, an AI computing firm, raised a $320M Series C round backed by investors like US Innovative Technology Fund (USIT), B Capital, and SK Telecom

• Rasa, an enterprise focused developer platform for conversational Gen AI, raised a $30M Series C round from investors including Basis Set Ventures, StepStone Group, and PayPal Ventures

• Xensam, a software asset management company, raised $40M from Expedition Capital

For a list of all the companies that have raised funding in the past 3 months, check out our funding database, now hosted directly on our website! 

JOBS
Leadership roles on the business side of AI

• Director of Global Systems Integrations BigPanda

• Head of Responsible AI, Public Sector Google

• Head of Marketplace Incentives Scale AI

• Enterprise Regional Sales Director Sword Health

• VP of Sales Textio

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