OpenAI partners w/ Los Alamos National Lab

Today’s Highlights:

📰 News: OpenAI partners w/ Los Alamos National Lab to use AI for bioscientific research + Samsung announces it latest devices packed w/ AI features

💰 Funding: Index Ventures raises $2Bn to continue investing in AI

⚡️ Top News Stories:

1. OpenAI and Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) are collaborating to explore the safe use of AI in bioscientific research.

• The partnership aligns with the recent White House Executive Order, tasking national labs with evaluating AI models' capabilities, including their application in biological contexts.

• The partnership also aims to evaluate AI's ability to perform tasks such as genetic modification, cell growth, and separation, enhancing the efficiency of both experts and novices.

• The study will specifically assess how GPT-4o can assist in laboratory tasks using vision and voice inputs, contributing to AI biosecurity evaluations and advancing state-of-the-art research.

2. Samsung launched Galaxy AI, integrating new AI features into its latest devices including the Galaxy Z Fold 6, Galaxy Z Flip 6, Galaxy Watch, and Galaxy Ring. Here’s a video summary:

3. VC firm Andreessen Horowitz (A16z) has purchased thousands of GPUs, including Nvidia's H100 processors, to rent out to its portfolio companies, providing essential computational resources to aid in AI development.

4. OpenAI has developed an internal scale to measure the progress of its LLMs toward achieving artificial general intelligence (AGI), from Level 1 (current chatbots like ChatGPT) to Level 5 (AI performing the work of entire organizations).

5. The Washington Post has launched an AI-driven chatbot, Climate Answers, to respond to user queries about climate using information from its articles.

6. Scale AI and AWS have announced a multi-year partnership to boost GenAI adoption among enterprise and public sector customers, w/ the partnership aiming to overcome challenges in GenAI deployment, such as trust and customization issues with proprietary data, by leveraging Scale’s GenAI Platform and AWS services.

7. US Senators have introduced the COPIED Act to help authenticate and detect AI-generated content, protecting journalists and artists from unauthorized use of their work. The bill directs the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to create standards for proving content origin and detecting synthetic content, including through watermarking.

8. OpenAI announced that it will block API access to its services from China starting July 9, intensifying the shift away from OpenAI tools.

9. Elon Musk's AI startup xAI has ceased discussions to significantly increase its use of Oracle Cloud services, w/ the breakdown occurring due to xAI's stringent timeline demands and Oracle's concerns about power supply adequacy at the preferred location. xAI will now opt to build a supercomputer in Memphis to meet Musk's timeline.

10. Microsoft and Apple decided against taking board roles at OpenAI, likely due to regulatory pressures concerning Big Tech's influence over AI.

11. Microsoft researchers developed VALL-E 2, an AI voice synthesizer that achieves "human parity" in creating realistic human voices from text prompts.

12. Japan's Defense Ministry released its first basic policy on AI use, aiming to address manpower shortages and advance military technology.

13. Intuit announced the layoff of 1,800 employees, about 10% of its workforce, while planning to hire an equal number of new workers, focusing on AI capabilities.

💰 Top Funding News:

1. Index Ventures has secured over $2Bn to invest in AI, with $800M for early-stage startups and $1.5 billion for later-stage companies.

2. Skild AI, which is developing a scalable foundation model for robotics, designed as a general-purpose brain adaptable to various robots and tasks, including manipulation, locomotion, and navigation, raised a $300M Series A, led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, Coatue, SoftBank Group, and Jeff Bezos (through Bezos Expeditions), w/ Felicis Ventures, Sequoia, Menlo Ventures, General Catalyst, CRV, Amazon, SV Angel, and Carnegie Mellon University.

3. Captions, which leverages AI to enable users to create, edit, and distribute videos easily, even without filmmaking experience, raised a $60M Series C led by Index Ventures, w/ Kleiner Perkins, Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital, and actor Jared Leto, among others.

4. Volley, which specializes in AI-powered voice-enabled games, integrating speech recognition, natural language processing, LLM-powered content generation, and speech synthesis, raised a $55M Series C, co-led by Microsoft's M12 Ventures and Lightspeed Venture Partners, w/ General Catalyst, Causeway Media Partners, the Amazon Alexa Fund, BITKRAFT, Y Combinator, Boost VC, Alumni Ventures, Waverley, Gaingels, and Riverside.

5. Silo AI, which specializes in developing end-to-end AI-driven solutions that enable customers to integrate AI into their products and services, has been acquired by AMD for $665M. 

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