AI updates dominate Meta Connect

Today’s Highlights:

📰 News: Meta Connect highlights AI updates + OpenAI CTO resigns amid major restructuring

💰 Funding: Runway launches fund for 100 AI-driven films + Anthropic begins discussions to raise new funding

⚡️ Top News Stories:

1. Meta Connect 2024 featured multiple AI announcements across its products:

• Meta AI is now multimodal, offering voice interaction and image recognition across platforms like Messenger, WhatsApp, and Instagram.

• New Llama 3.2 models can analyze charts, images, and maps, providing insights like identifying trends or calculating distances.

• AI-generated content is now being tested for Facebook feeds, with personalized suggestions for user engagement.

• Auto-dubbing for Reels supports lip-syncing between English and Spanish, aiding creators in breaking language barriers.

• AI avatars for creators and business AI assistants now offer enhanced interaction capabilities.

• Zuckerberg highlighted that 500M users are now engaging with Meta AI, showcasing its widespread adoption.

2. OpenAI CTO Mira Murati departs, joined by two senior leaders, as the latest leadership to leave, all while OpenAI plans a major restructure, shifting to a for-profit model with CEO Sam Altman receiving equity for the first time.

• Mira Murati, OpenAI’s CTO, announced her departure to pursue new ventures, followed by Chief Research Officer Bob McGrew and VP Barret Zoph.

• Sam Altman reassured staff, stating the transitions were amicable and part of a natural leadership shift, while OpenAI declined to provide further comment on the transition.

• These resignations align with OpenAI's ongoing $6.5Bn funding round and a potential shift to a for-profit structure.

• OpenAI is planning to restructure its core business into a for-profit benefit corporation, shifting control from its non-profit board to attract more investors and grow its valuation.

• CEO Sam Altman will receive equity in OpenAI for the first time, with the company potentially valued at $150Bn after the restructuring.

• The non-profit entity will continue to exist, holding a minority stake, but the change raises concerns about maintaining AI safety and accountability as the company pursues AGI.

3. Google CEO Sundar Pichai delivered a keynote at the UN's "Summit of the Future," emphasizing AI's transformative potential to advance global progress and unveiling Google's $120M Global AI Opportunity Fund to expand AI education and ensure inclusivity worldwide.

• Pichai highlighted key AI applications, including expanding language access through Google Translate, accelerating scientific discoveries with AlphaFold, improving disaster warnings via AI-powered systems, and boosting global economic productivity.

• He acknowledged the risks of AI, such as bias, deep fakes, and the potential disruption to jobs, stressing the importance of developing AI responsibly with a focus on ethics and transparency.

• He urged global leaders to create supportive policies and infrastructure to prevent an "AI divide" and ensure that AI's benefits are accessible to everyone, particularly in developing regions.

4. OpenAI has launched the OpenAI Academy to invest in developers and organizations using AI to address critical challenges and promote economic growth, with an initial focus on low- and middle-income countries.

5. OpenAI rolls out Advanced Voice Mode for ChatGPT, introducing five new voices and a smoother, more natural conversation experience.

6. NotebookLM, Google’s AI note-taking app, now offers the ability to summarize YouTube videos by analyzing their transcripts, including auto-generated ones, broadening its input sources alongside Google Docs, PDFs, and more.

7. Duolingo introduced new AI-powered features at Duocon 2024, including Adventures mini-games and a Video Call feature, aimed at enhancing immersive language learning experiences.

8. Google paid $2.7Bn to license Character.AI technology, primarily to rehire its co-founder Noam Shazeer, who previously quit Google due to frustrations over their reluctance to release a chatbot he developed, but is now one of three key leaders developing Google's next AI model, Gemini.

9. James Cameron joins the board of Stability AI, the company behind the popular generative AI model, Stable Diffusion, as he sees the intersection of generative AI and CGI as the future of film technology, pushing the boundaries of storytelling and visual effects.

10. Alibaba and Nvidia collaborate on integrating LLMs into autonomous driving systems for Chinese electric vehicles.

11. Hugging Face, the AI hosting platform, has surpassed 1 million AI models, marking a significant milestone in the machine-learning field, offering customized and fine-tuned models for a range of use cases and industries.

12. Over 100 companies, including Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and OpenAI, have signed the EU AI Pact which aims to promote early compliance with the AI Act by encouraging companies to make voluntary pledges on AI governance, ethics, and awareness. Notable absences include Apple, Meta, Anthropic, and Nvidia.

13. The FTC announces a crackdown on deceptive AI claims and schemes through Operation AI Comply, taking five law enforcement actions against operations that exploit AI hype or sell AI technology for deceptive and unfair practices, especially in areas like legal services, e-commerce, and fake reviews.

💰 Top Funding News:

1. Anthropic is in early talks to raise new funding with a potential valuation of up to $40Bn, though negotiations are still in preliminary stages.

2. Runway launches a $5M fund to support 100 AI-driven films, offering grants and service credits for filmmakers.

3. Harmonic, which is developing Mathematical Superintelligence (MSI), an AI that surpasses human mathematical capabilities, raised a $75M Series A, led by Sequoia Capital, w/ Index Ventures, Era Funds, GreatPoint Ventures, DST Global, and notable angels. 

4. Supabase, which supports AI-driven applications by enabling developers to manage vector data for AI use cases, raised an $80M Series C led by Peak XV and Craft Ventures, w/ Avra Capital, Coatue, Felicis, and Y Combinator.

5. UJET, which uses gen-AI to enhance customer experience (CX) by creating seamless, multimodal interactions that integrate real-time AI with human agents, raised a $76M Series D led by Sapphire Ventures, w/ KeyCorp, IonPacific, GV, Kleiner Perkins, Citi Ventures, DCM, and Ericsson Ventures.

6. Torq, which uses AI to automate security workflows, enabling organizations to streamline the response to cyberattacks, raised a $70M Series C, led by Evolution Equity Partners, w/ Bessemer Venture Partners, Notable Capital, Greenfield Partners, and Strait Capital.

7. Tennr, which leverages AI to automate healthcare administrative tasks, raised a $33M Series B, led by Lightspeed Venture Partners. 

8. Arcade, which employs generative AI to allow users to create and customize products, such as jewelry, by typing a few words or uploading images, raised $17M in total funding, led by Reid Hoffman and Brit Morin of Offline Ventures, w/ Sound Ventures (Ashton Kutcher), Heretic Ventures, Alexa von Tobel, Colin Kaepernick, Christy Turlington Burns, and others.

9. Convergence AI, which focuses on developing "Proxy" agents equipped with long-term memory, using Large Meta Learning Models (LMLM) that enable these agents to learn and acquire skills autonomously, raised a $12M Pre-seed round led by Balderton Capital, w/ Salesforce Ventures and Shopify Ventures.

10. Letta, which focuses on building AI agents with advanced memory systems, allowing them to retain and update memory across interactions, raised a $10M Seed round, led by Felicis, w/ Sunflower Capital, Essence VC, and notable angels. 

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