Google launches Gemini 2.0

Today’s Highlights:

📰 News: Google launches Gemini 2.0

💰 Funding: Green data centers built for AI+ML raises $600M

⚡️ Top News Stories:

1. Google launches Gemini 2.0, its most advanced AI model for the "agentic era," featuring multimodal outputs (image, audio) and tool integration for advanced capabilities.

• New Prototypes and Applications: Gemini 2.0 powers projects like Project Astra (universal AI assistant), Project Mariner (browser-based task completion), and Jules (AI coding agent) to explore agentic AI.

• Enhanced Features for Developers: The experimental Gemini 2.0 Flash, with low latency and multimodal support, is available via Google AI Studio and Vertex AI, with general availability planned for January 2024.

• AI in Google Products: Gemini 2.0 capabilities are integrated into AI Overviews in Google Search and will expand to more products, including the Gemini app and gaming partnerships, in early 2024.

2. Microsoft’s Phi-4, a 14-Bn-parameter AI model, outperforms larger competitors like Google’s Gemini Pro 1.5 in mathematical reasoning while using fewer resources, challenging the "bigger is better" paradigm and offering cost-efficient, accessible AI solutions for mid-sized businesses.

3. Meta debuts Video Seal, an open-source tool for imperceptibly watermarking AI-generated videos, that resists edits like blurring and cropping while embedding hidden messages to trace content origins, addressing the rise of deep fakes.

4. Meta launches Meta Motivo, an AI model that enables lifelike movements for digital avatars, advancing realistic NPCs, immersive Metaverse interactions, and democratized character animation.

5. Google and Samsung's "Project Moohan" introduces a mixed-reality headset powered by Android XR, featuring AI integration, Google services compatibility, and a lightweight design with swappable USB-C batteries, aiming to rival Apple’s Vision Pro and Meta’s devices.

6. Replit launches its AI-powered tools, Agent and Assistant, enabling users to create and refine software effortlessly, with features like React integration for polished web apps, application generation from screenshots or URLs, and streamlined project updates.

7. Anthropic introduces Clio, a privacy-preserving tool that analyzes AI usage by clustering anonymized conversations into high-level themes, offering insights into trends like coding, education, and business strategy while safeguarding user data and enhancing AI safety systems.

8. Time, in collaboration with Scale AI, launched an AI chatbot alongside its 2024 Person of the Year announcement, offering features like article summaries, translations in six languages, and audio playback to boost global engagement, gather usage data, and recirculate readers to relevant content.

9. The Writers Guild of America (WGA) demands Hollywood studios take legal action against tech companies like Meta, Apple, and Nvidia for allegedly using film and TV dialogue from OpenSubtitles.org without authorization to train AI systems, accusing them of exploiting "looted" intellectual property to profit from plagiarized services.

10. Apple Intelligence now integrates ChatGPT with Siri and Writing Tools, allowing users to generate content, understand images, or solve complex problems without leaving Apple apps.

11. Apple is partnering with Broadcom to develop its first AI-focused server chip, code-named Baltra, leveraging TSMC’s advanced N3P process for compute-intensive AI tasks, aiming for mass production by 2026 while reducing reliance on Nvidia's costly processors.

14. Amazon has launched the AGI SF Lab in San Francisco to advance long-term AI research, leveraging its Nova foundation models—Nova Pro for high-performance multimodal tasks and Nova Lite for cost-efficient processing—while focusing on combining large language models with reinforcement learning to develop AI agents capable of reasoning, planning, and handling complex workflows in digital and physical environments.

💰 Top Funding News:

1. Crusoe, which builds environmentally aligned data centers optimized for AI and machine learning workloads, raised a $600M Series D, led by Founders Fund, w/ Nvidia, Fidelity, Long Journey Ventures, Mubadala, Ribbit Capital, and Valor Equity Partners.

2. Speak, which uses LLMs and speech tech to deliver highly personalized language tutoring, raised a $78M Series C, led by Accel, w/ OpenAI Startup Fund, Khosla Ventures, Y Combinator, and others.

3. Anybotics, which develops a quadruped autonomous robot equipped with AI-powered sensors and cameras for industrial inspections, raised a $60M Series B extension, co-led by Qualcomm Ventures and Supernova Invest, w/ Bessemer Venture Partners, NGP Capital, Swisscanto, Swisscom Ventures, TDK Ventures, and Walden Catalyst.

4. Evinced, which integrates AI-powered tools into the software development lifecycle to ensure accessibility compliance, raised a $55M Series C led by Insight Partners, w/ M12, BGV, Capital One Ventures, Engineering Capital, and Vertex Ventures.

5. NeuBird, which provides an AI-driven site reliability engineer (SRE) that uses LLMs to identify, diagnose, and resolve IT system issues, raised a $22.5M Seed extension round, led by Microsoft’s M12, w/ Mayfield, Stepstone Group, and Prosperity7 Ventures.

6. Vapi, which provides a developer platform for deploying AI-powered voice agents tailored for enterprise applications, raised a $20M Series A, led by Bessemer Venture Partners, w/ Abstract Ventures, AI Grant Inc., Y Combinator, Saga Ventures and Michael Ovitz.

7. RapidCanvas, which utilizes AI agents powered by LLMs to automate up to 75% of complex tasks traditionally handled by data scientists and engineers, raised a $16M Series A, led by Peak XV Partners, w/ Titanium Ventures, Accel, and Valley Capital Partners.

8. HappyRobot, which uses AI agents—dynamic conversational AI workers—to automate logistics communication tasks such as carrier sales, check calls, and proof-of-delivery (POD) collections, raised a $15.6M Series A, led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), w/ RyderVentures, Array Ventures, and Y Combinator.

9. Eureka Robotics, develops AI-powered systems for precision manufacturing and logistics, combining high-accuracy spatial precision with high-agility robotics, raised $10.5M Series A, led by B Capital.

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