Written by: Zhang Siyu, Jiang Ruijie, Lu Yanjun, Yang Qiuqiu, Xu Tao, He Xinye
Editor: Wu Yangyang
Key Points
New financing
Nvidia invests in self-driving Wayve;
Humanoid robot company "Accelerated Evolution" completed 10 million yuan in Pre-A round of financing;
Mistral AI plans to raise about $600 million at a $6 billion valuation;
Altera, a gaming agent, raised $9 million to focus on social emotional intelligence AI;
AI financial company Daloopa completes Series B financing;
Docusign's acquisition of contract automation company Lexion;
Rad AI closed a $50 million Series B funding round with AI tools that generate reports for radiologists.
What's new
TikTok sued the U.S. government to block the implementation of the split bill;
The United States restricts Intel and Qualcomm exports to Huawei;
The U.S. discusses restricting the use of ChatGPT, Deepmind, etc. in China;
Scale AI关闭奥斯汀办公室；
Apple unveils ultra-thin iPad Pro, but pulls down controversial ads;
Compared with the Mate 60, the proportion of domestic parts of Huawei Pura 70 has increased;
漫威将为Vision Pro推出沉浸式剧情片。
New financing
Nvidia invests in Wayve, which is self-driving
Wayve, a self-driving start-up, received a $1 billion investment, led by SoftBank and followed by Nvidia and Microsoft.
On May 6, Wayve, a British autonomous driving company, received a $1.05 billion Series C financing led by SoftBank Group and followed by Nvidia and Microsoft, which is the largest artificial intelligence financing project in the history of the United Kingdom. Founded in 2017, Wayve closed a $200 million Series B funding round in January 2022.
Wayve does "end-to-end" autonomous driving, that is, to make an overall autonomous driving model, and then only need to input sensor data to the vehicle to drive autonomously. Compared with traditional autonomous driving solutions, which separate and integrate the steps of perception, prediction, and planning, the end-to-end mode can avoid problems such as each module fighting with each other and error superposition, and is regarded as the future development direction. Tesla's latest FSD V12 version is also starting to adopt an end-to-end approach.
Unlike Tesla, Wayve only provides self-driving solutions and does not build its own cars. The company has not yet announced that its products will be deployed in any production vehicles. According to the plan, Wayve will also expand its autonomous driving solution to the robot business in the future, and build an embodied AI that meets a variety of scenarios.
Reference Links:
https://techcrunch.com/2024/05/06/wayve-raises-1-billion-led-by-softbank-to-take-self-driving-to-cars-and-robots/
https://techcrunch.com/2024/05/07/exclusive-wayve-cofounder-alex-kendall-on-the-autonomous-future-for-cars-and-robots/
Humanoid robot company "Accelerated Evolution" completed 10 million yuan in Pre-A round of financing
According to 36Kr, the humanoid robot company "Accelerated Evolution" recently completed tens of millions of yuan in Pre-A round of financing, led by Source Code Capital, followed by Shuimu Venture Capital and Yinggang Capital. According to Aiqicha information, Beijing Accelerated Evolution Technology Co., Ltd. was established in June 2023 and completed an angel round of financing of tens of millions of yuan in October of that year.
The founding team of this company has a Tsinghua background: the founder, Cheng Hao, studied at Tsinghua University and was the vice president of ByteDance Feishu products; Chief Scientist Zhao Mingguo is a researcher in the Department of Automation at Tsinghua University, and the director of the Brain-like Robotics Center of the Robot Control Laboratory and the Center for Unmanned Systems at Tsinghua University. Accelerated Evolution will provide developers with humanoid robots and development tools, and plans to officially release its humanoid robot products equipped with an operation control algorithm development platform in the second half of this year, and begin mass production and sales in small batches.
Reference Links:
https://baijiahao.baidu.com/s?id=1798357319212244883&wfr=spider&for=pc
Mistral AI plans to raise about $600 million at a $6 billion valuation
On May 9, it was reported that Mistral AI, a French open-source large model company, plans to seek new, less than $600 million financing at a valuation of $6 billion. Venture capital firms such as DST in Russia, General Catalyst in the United States, and Lightspeed Ventures are all looking to participate in the round. According to the news, Mistral AI has been planning this new round of financing since March this year.
Mistral AI was only founded in April last year and currently has about 36 investors. "New Cortex" previously reported that in December 2023, Mistral AI just completed a $480 million financing round and raised its valuation to nearly $2 billion. In February, Microsoft also said it would assist the French company in bringing its AI models to the global market, after investing in Mistral AI.
The Mistal 8X7B model is currently one of the most popular open-source models in the world.
Reference Links:
https://techcrunch.com/2024/05/09/sources-mistral-ai-raising-at-a-6b-valuation-softbank-not-in-but-dst-is/
Altera, a gaming agent, raised $9 million to focus on social emotional intelligence AI
On May 8, gaming startup Altera announced the completion of a $9 million seed round of funding, co-led by the fund of former Google CEO Eric Schmidt and the Patron Fund, a former employee of Riot Games.
Altera's main focus is on the agent, which was first introduced to the open-world game Minecraft. Agents are like a real player in the game rather than an assistant or NPC, they have the freedom to make decisions, players can communicate with it like friends and play games in teams, and multiple agents have the opportunity to be online at the same time.
Altera was founded in December 2023 by Robert Yang, a former neuroscientist at MIT, who resigned from his job with colleagues to start Altera, with the aim of developing AI agents with social emotional intelligence. The company's focus is not to replace humans with AI, but to do things that humans can't, such as introducing agents in the gaming space to help game companies test and optimize gaming experiences more efficiently, and capture interesting gameplay behaviors to ultimately make better games.
Reference Links:
https://techcrunch.com/2024/05/08/bye-bye-bots-alteras-game-playing-ai-agents-get-backing-from-eric-schmidt/
AI finance company Daloopa closed its Series B financing
On May 7, Daloopa, an AI-driven provider of financial fundamentals and historical data, announced the closing of an $18 million Series B funding round led by Touring Capital with participation from Morgan Stanley and existing investor Nexus Venture Partners. Daloopa closed a $20 million Series A funding round in July 2021 and now has a total funding round of $40 million. In addition, the company intends to expand into new markets, particularly Europe and Asia.
Founded in 2019 by Thomas Li, a former buy-side analyst at hedge fund Point72 Ventures, Daniel Chen, a former engineer at Microsoft, and Jeremy Huang, a software engineer who previously worked at Airbnb and Meta, Daloopa focuses on developing AI tools that extract and organize data for analysts from financial reports and investor presentations. According to the introduction, Daloopa can discover data and pass it on to analysts' financial models, reducing the likelihood of errors from manually copying data. Thomas Li said Daloopa's training data comes from "public sources such as SEC filings and investor presentations" and is being trained on a growing body of financial documents.
Currently, Daloopa's clients are primarily hedge funds, private equity firms, mutual funds, and corporate investment banks, which use Daloopa for investment and due diligence research.
Reference Links:
https://techcrunch.com/2024/05/07/daloopa-trains-ai-to-automate-financial-analysts-workflows/
Docusign acquires contract automation company Lexion
On May 6, Docusign, an American electronic signature company, announced the acquisition of AI contract management startup Lexion for $165 million.
Incubated by the non-profit Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence, Lexion began as an "intelligent" contract repository where legal teams could ask questions about document content using natural language. Since then, Lexion has expanded its capabilities to include not only legal departments, but also sales, IT, human resources, and finance to solve document creation problems. Prior to its acquisition by Docusign, Lexion had raised $35.2 million in venture capital from investors including Khosla Ventures, Madrona and Point72 Ventures.
Docusign is a leading company in the U.S. electronic signature industry. Another well-known company in the industry is Adobe, which added eSignature functionality to its PDF software in 2011 through the acquisition of eSignature startup EchoSign. However, Docusign will guide the customer to the process after completing the electronic signature in order to manage all electronic contracts. In addition, Docusign started with large companies, so that small companies that serve large companies also use Docusign to sign contracts.
Docusign CEO Allan Thygesen said Lexion's AI technology will enable Docusign customers to gain a "more granular" understanding of contract structures and data, gaining insights and identifying potential risks. The acquisition comes at a pivotal time for Docusign, which is in the process of selling itself to a private equity firm at a valuation of about $12.5 billion, according to TechCrunch. Perhaps to attract funders, Docusign announced in February that it planned to lay off about 6% of its workforce (involving about 400 jobs).
Reference Links:
https://techcrunch.com/2024/05/06/docusign-acquires-ai-powered-contract-management-firm-lexion/
Rad AI closed a $50 million Series B funding round to develop an AI tool that generates reports for radiologists
On May 7, Rad AI announced that it had successfully raised $50 million in Series B funding led by Khosla Ventures. Rad AI is an AI startup in the healthcare sector that was founded in 2018. The company's latest product, Rad AI Reporting, automatically generates portions of radiology reports, especially those with high repetitive characteristics, and customizes them to match the radiologists' language style and tone to ensure that the resulting reports are both accurate and personalized.
In addition, another of the company's products, Rad AI Continuity, a follow-up patient tracking solution, is also used by many large U.S. health systems. The system can automatically identify patients who need follow-up on their health status and remind patients to follow up on their health status via email, text message, or mobile phone. Currently, more than one-third of the U.S. health system and radiology departments use Rad AI's products.
Reference Links:
https://techcrunch.com/2024/05/07/rad-ai-a-startup-that-helps-radiologists-save-time-on-report-generation-raises-50m-series-b-from-khosla-ventures/
Company dynamics
TikTok sued the U.S. government to block the implementation of the split bill
On May 7, TikTok and its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, filed a lawsuit in the U.S. Circuit Court for the District of Columbia, accusing the U.S. federal government of violating First Amendment free speech. The lawsuit aims to block the implementation of the Act to Protect Americans from Foreign Adversary-Controlled Apps, signed by U.S. President Joe Biden in April, which requires ByteDance to sell TikTok within nine months (before January 19, 2025) or it will be banned nationwide in the United States.
TikTok claims that the bill violates the First Amendment, and that according to the company's legal documents, the divestiture is "simply impossible, commercially, technically, legally." TikTok also said in its 67-page lawsuit that "for the first time in its history, Congress has enacted a law imposing a permanent nationwide ban on a single, designated speech platform and prohibiting every American from participating in a unique online community with more than 1 billion people worldwide." TikTok has asked the court for a judgment and wants it to issue an order preventing the attorney general from enforcing the injunction.
Reference Links:
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/05/08/tiktok-sued-the-us-government-to-block-a-ban-heres-what-happens-now.html
The United States restricts the export of Intel and Qualcomm to Huawei
The U.S. government reportedly revoked Huawei's licenses to purchase semiconductors from Qualcomm and Intel, further tightening export restrictions against Huawei. The U.S. Commerce Department confirmed on Tuesday that it had revoked "certain licenses" for exports to Huawei, but declined to give details. As a result of the ban, Intel expects second-quarter revenue to slip to "below the midpoint" of its previous guidance range of $12.5 billion to $13.5 billion. Qualcomm also confirmed the news, saying that it "will continue to comply with all applicable export control regulations."
Since 2019, Huawei has been placed on the U.S. trade restriction list, which restricts its ability to buy chip components from U.S. companies without U.S. government approval. There are reports that Intel has been allowed to supply chips to Huawei since 2020, and Qualcomm can sell Huawei a combination of older 4G chips and 5G technology. However, after the license is revoked, the two chipmaking companies will no longer be able to sell any chips to Huawei.
Reference Links:
https://www.reuters.com/technology/us-revoked-some-export-licenses-chinas-huawei-2024-05-07/
The U.S. is discussing restricting the use of advanced models such as GPT in China
The U.S. government is reportedly considering new regulatory measures to restrict the export of proprietary or closed-source AI models, and has tentative plans to restrict China's access to advanced AI models, including ChatGPT. However, the U.S. Department of Commerce has not responded to this news at this time.
Currently, U.S. AI companies such as OpenAI, Google DeepMind, and Anthropic can sell state-of-the-art AI models to customers without government oversight. To restrict exports, the U.S. is likely to adopt an AI executive order issued in October last year. The decree sets a threshold based on the computing power of training, and when the computing power of an AI model reaches this standard, developers must report their AI development plans to the U.S. Department of Commerce and provide the corresponding test results.
The Commerce Department may eventually lower the lower limit, along with other factors, including the type of data or the potential use of AI models — such as the ability of models to design proteins used to make biological weapons — could be limited, sources said. However, it has also been reported that the United States has not finalized the proposed rule, and any new export controls will also be targeted at other countries.
Reference Links:
https://www.reuters.com/technology/us-eyes-curbs-chinas-access-ai-software-behind-apps-like-chatgpt-2024-05-08/
Scale AI关闭奥斯汀办公室
On May 7, data annotation company Scale AI broke the news that it had closed its contract offices in Austin and reduced the number of contract workers in Dallas and San Francisco. Anna Franko, a spokesperson for the company, said that the contractors involved in the change are mainly responsible for the labeling and classification of generative AI.
As a data annotation company, Scale AI mainly provides image and data annotation solutions for the AI industry. The company was founded 8 years ago and initially provided image tagging services primarily for autonomous vehicle software. With the rise of generative AI, Scale AI has expanded its reach to help companies like OpenAI, Cohere, and Adept optimize their large language models.
Scale AI's business has been strong despite the downsizing. According to The Information, the company's revenue doubled to $675 million last year, driven by its generative AI business. Scale AI is also in talks with venture capital firm Accel for a new round of funding, which is expected to increase its valuation by 80% to about $13 billion. In addition, Scale AI laid off 20% of its workforce in January 2023, and the company now has about 600 employees worldwide. Recently, Scale AI made London its headquarters in Europe.
Apple unveiled the slim iPad Pro, but pulled down the controversial ad
On May 7, Apple launched the new iPad Pro at the spring new product launch conference, which is equipped with OLED display as standard and equipped with the new M4 chip. This is Apple's first update to the iPad series in 18 months.
At the same time as the release of the new iPad Pro, Apple unveiled a new team called Crush! (Crush!), showing objects such as musical instruments and books being crushed by hydraulic presses. The ad seems to imply that Apple has squeezed creativity into the latest iPad Pro products, highlighting the new iPad Pro's powerful and thin body. Apple CEO Tim Cook also retweeted the ad on the X platform.
However, the ad quickly sparked controversy and received a large number of negative reviews on the X platform, including "offensive", "destroying art", "stifling creativity", etc. Celebrities such as actor Hugh Grant, Justin Bateman, and songwriter Crispin Hunt have also voiced criticism. Apple later apologized for the ad and abandoned plans to run it on TV.
Reference Links:
https://v.qq.com/x/page/q3549k2a90f.html
Compared with the Mate 60, the proportion of Chinese-made parts of the Huawei Pura 70 has increased
On May 9, the disassembly results showed that the Huawei Pura 70 Pro model uses a 7nm Kirin 9010 chip, and the proportion of domestic components has increased compared with the Mate 60.
According to the teardown results provided by iFixit, an online technical repair company, and TechSearch International, a consulting company, the NAND flash memory chips used in the Pura 70 Pro are likely to be packaged by HiSilicon, a semiconductor company owned by Huawei, and the DRAM chips used are still manufactured by SK hynix. For comparison, the DRAM and NAND chips used in Huawei's Mate 60 series, which was launched in August last year, are both manufactured by SK hynix.
In addition, the Pura 70 phone uses the Kirin 9010 chip, which is an upgraded version of the Kirin 9000 chip used in the Mate 60 series, and both chips are manufactured on a 7nm process. According to iFixit, the 9010 still has not reached the 5nm process target, but SMIC is still on track to make the leap to the 5nm process by the end of this year.
Shahram Mokhtari, iFixit's chief teardown technician, said that while it is not possible to provide an exact percentage, the Pura 70 series is using more domestic parts than the Mate 60.
Reference Links:
https://www.reuters.com/technology/huaweis-new-phone-uses-more-china-made-parts-memory-chip-2024-05-09/
漫威将为Vision Pro推出沉浸式剧情片
On May 9, Marvel announced that it will cooperate with ILM Immersive to launch an interactive immersive feature film on Apple's Vision Pro headset. The content of the film comes from the Disney+ original animation "What If...? 》（What If...? series, which will last about an hour, will be available in the form of an app for Vision Pro.
Producer Brad Winderbaum said that using the spatial computing power of Vision Pro, users can interact with the world around them by using their eyes and hands to get a more realistic experience in the film. ILM Immersive is an entertainment studio owned by Lucasfilm, and its masterpiece is the Star Wars VR game. Marvel has not yet announced a specific launch date for the app.
On the same day, the relevant person in charge of Taobao said that the official version of Taobao Vision Pro will open the trading function. In April this year, Taobao launched the beta version of Vision Pro, and AutoNavi also announced the launch of the Vision Pro version in April, providing users with a more immersive map exploration experience.
Reference Links:
https://marvel.com/articles/culture-lifestyle/marvel-studios-ilm-immersive-what-if-an-immersive-story-apple-vision-pro-exclusive
-END-
OpenAI、Google、Kimi都在「Perplexity化」,谁是Perplexity?
During the May Day period, these two AIs became popular|Smart Weekly (Part I)
Humanoid Robots Get Hot in Silicon Valley|Smart Weekly (Part II)
Rokid: "To be the next iPhone or the next Nokia" makes people anxious
