Joe Biden initiates executive order to restrict US investments in Chinese AI

⚡ Today’s Highlights

• 📰 News: President Joe Biden initiates executive order to restrict US investments in Chinese AI + Google, OpenAI, Microsoft, and Anthropic team up with White House for cybersecurity challenge

• 💰 Funding: Weights & Biases, Credgenics, deepset, Symmetry Systems, CUBE3.AI, and Matrixian Group

• 🌎 Content: NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang discusses the crucial role of evolving hardware and accelerated computing in AI in his keynote address at SIGGRAPH 2023

📰 Today's Top Stories

Biden orders restrictions on U.S. investments in Chinese technology

(5 min read) (Source: NPR)

TLDR: President Joe Biden initiated an executive order yesterday to further regulate and restrict U.S.-based investments in China, particularly targeting sectors like advanced computer chips, microelectronics, quantum tech, and artificial intelligence, due to national security concerns.

• Despite the deep trade relationship, there's growing tension between the U.S. and China. While Biden's administration aims to maintain connections, measures like limiting exports and investments indicate a shift. The order builds upon previous tariffs and regulations set by the Trump administration.

• Biden’s strategic moves include fortifying alliances with countries like Japan, South Korea, and Australia. The executive order has bipartisan support, with a push from both parties to monitor investments, but reactions indicate a desire for even stricter measures against China.

The Big Picture: The evolving dynamic between the U.S. and China underscores a significant pivot in global economic strategies, where technology, trade, and geopolitics intersect. As both nations vie for technological supremacy, global companies face uncertainties, reshaping investment patterns and potentially reshuffling the global economic order.

China’s internet giants order $5bn of Nvidia chips to power AI ambitions

(5 min read) (Source: Financial Times)

TLDR: Major Chinese tech firms including Baidu, ByteDance, Tencent, and Alibaba have ordered Nvidia chips worth $5bn, amid concerns over potential U.S. export restrictions. They've ordered $1bn of A800 processors for delivery this year and an additional $4bn for 2024.

• The A800 chips are the accessible versions for Chinese companies, given export limits set by the U.S. Nvidia’s GPUs, particularly the A800, are pivotal for fueling AI advancements, especially in developing expansive language AI models.

• Inspired by the success of OpenAI's ChatGPT, Chinese companies are investing heavily in their own versions of generative AI products. ByteDance is testing its 'Grace' chatbot, while Baidu is developing a ChatGPT-like 'Ernie Bot'. Both Alibaba and Tencent have major plans to integrate and expand AI capabilities across their services.

• With the skyrocketing demand for AI and a shortage of the required chips, the A800's price has surged by over 50%. Chinese tech giants, which initially had a limited stock, are now aggressively accumulating these GPUs to stay ahead in AI developments.

The Big Picture: The intense scramble for Nvidia chips emphasizes the critical importance of AI in shaping the future of tech industries globally. As geopolitical tensions influence tech trade, the capacity for AI development becomes a strategic asset, potentially reshaping the balance of global tech innovation and competition.

Google, OpenAI team up with the White House for cybersecurity challenge

(3 min read) (Source: The Verge)

TLDR: The Biden administration has unveiled the "AI Cyber Challenge" in partnership with prominent AI firms like Anthropic, Google, Microsoft, and OpenAI. Hosted by DARPA, this challenge aims to leverage AI for enhancing cybersecurity measures, with a prize pool of $20 million targeting improved protection of US infrastructure.

• Teams will initially compete in qualifying rounds next spring, progressing through semifinals at Def Con 2024, and concluding with finals at Def Con 2025. Successful solutions are expected to be open-sourced, promoting widespread application across different sectors, from open-source communities to commercial industries.

• This AI-centric cybersecurity challenge follows a series of cybersecurity announcements by the Biden administration, emphasizing enhancing defenses for K-12 institutions. Subsidies, grant programs, and collaborations with entities like Amazon Web Services highlight the government's commitment to fortifying cybersecurity across various domains.

IBM Plans to Make Llama 2 Available within its Watsonx AI and Data Platform

(2 min read) (Source: IBM)

TLDR: IBM announced it will feature Meta Platforms' AI language program, Llama 2, on its enterprise AI platform, watsonx, allowing businesses to integrate this advanced AI model into their workflows.

• Following the success of OpenAI's ChatGPT, businesses are rapidly adopting AI to enhance their processes. IBM's partnership showcases this trend by bringing Meta's AI capabilities, along with forthcoming tools like AI tuning studios and fact sheets.

• Llama 2, distributed through Microsoft's Azure, is Meta's response to generative AI models like OpenAI's ChatGPT and Google's Bard, marking fierce competition in the budding generative AI sector.

👀 More Reading:

• Google’s AI ambassador walks a fine line between hype and doom (The Washington Post)

• What the Finance Industry Tells Us About the Future of AI (Harvard Business Review)

• How continuous learning keeps leaders relevant in the age of AI (MIT Sloan)

• This AI Company Releases Deepfakes Into the Wild. Can It Control Them? (WIRED)

• What Meta’s wild headset prototypes really mean (POLITICO)

• Meet the Company Building AI Fighter Jets for the U.S. Military (Decrypt)

💰 Funding News

1. Weights & Biases, a leading end-to-end MLOps platform that provides tools for machine learning development, experiment tracking, and collaboration, raised $50M in funding.

• Round led by Daniel Gross and Nat Friedman. Additional participation from Sapphire Ventures (Casber Wang, Partner) and existing investors, including Coatue, Insight Partners, Felicis, BOND, and BloombergBeta.

• Funding is for further developing its MLOps tools and launch Weights & Biases Prompts, a new offering that enhances its platform's capabilities

2. Credgenics, a provider of AI-powered Loan Collections and Debt Resolution tech for financial institutions, raised a $50M Series B.

• The company's platform is transforming debt collections and resolution processes, leading to significant improvements in resolution rates, collections efficiency, and legal effectiveness.

• Round led by Westbridge Capital (Sumir Chadha, Co-Founder & Managing Partner), Accel (Pratik Agarwal, Principal), Tanglin Ventures, Beams Fintech Fund, and other strategic investors.

• Funding is for product innovation, enhancing its technology platform, expanding its international business presence, and targeting additional segments within the BFSI industry.

3. deepset, an open-source startup specializing in empowering developers to build flexible and semantic search systems using the Haystack framework, raised $30M in funding.

• Round led by Balderton Capital, with participation from existing investors Google Ventures, Harpoon, and System.One, and Lunar.

• Funding is for further developing deepset's offerings, particularly its new SaaS product called deepset Cloud.

4. Symmetry Systems, a comprehensive Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) platform, raised $18M in funding.

• Their platform acts as a data firewall to enhance data security across hybrid cloud environments, such as Azure, AWS, GCP, and on-premise databases, using AI-enabled workflows

• Round led by Prefix Capital, with participation from W11 Capital, TSG, and Forgepoint Capital.

• Funding is for expanding Symmetry's channel partnerships, introducing a starter visibility product demonstrating the significance of data-to-identity abstraction, and advancing the second phase of cloud data security, focusing on autonomous response to threat detections and policy violations.

5. CUBE3.AI, a web3 transaction security platform that utilizes advanced ML to detect and block real-time threats in web3 transactions, raised $8.2M in funding.

• Investment led by Blockchange Ventures, Dispersion Capital, Symbolic Capital, Hypersphere Ventures, ICLUB, and TA Ventures.

• Funding is for further developing and expanding its platform.

6. Matrixian Group, a Dutch tech company specializing in data and AI services for the real estate sector, raised €3.5M in funding.

• Matrixian Group offers innovative solutions like automated property valuation, generating digital twins of properties, and identifying sustainability and investment opportunities.

• Round led by Pride Capital Partners (Lars van ‘t Hoenderdaal, Managing Partner).

• Funding is for enhancing the technological capabilities and supporting its international expansion efforts.

🌎 Fresh Content

1. At SIGGRAPH 2023, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang delivered the keynote address where he covered a ton topics including Nvidia's H100 datacenter GPUs, upgrades to the Grace Hopper Superchips and the GH200 AI supercomputers, adding Generative AI capabilities like ChatGPT by OpenAI to Nvidia's Omniverse, and other advances in spatial computing.

Check out this supercut of the keynote to get all the highlights.

2. In this short talk, David Sontag, Researcher and Professor at MIT CSAIL, gives an overview on the role he sees AI playing in the future of healthcare.

Thanks to massive adoption of Electronic Health Records, AI now has an important role to play in the health sector with all the data that is now available. AI can augment decision making for both clinicians and patients.

For clinicians, AI can guide treatment selection and do a much better job at forecasting the trajectory and outcomes of a disease.

For patients, AI can provide knowledge that can be brought home and implemented on their own.

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