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Silicon Valley Bank Collapse Could Destroy Start-Up Ecosystem

March 13, 2023

March 13, 2023

⚡ Today’s Highlights

  • 📰 News: SVB collapsed and could take AI start-ups with it

  • 💰 Funding: Masttro and wand

  • 🦾 Tools: Make a personalized AI chatbot for your business in 2 minutes or have a conversation with an AI over video chat

  • 📅 Events: The International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction starts today in Stockholm + Virtually!

📰 Today's Top Stories

(5 min read) (Source: FDIC)

TLDR: Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), a major player in the tech and venture capital community, has been closed by financial regulators and its deposits were taken over, in what is the largest US bank failure since the 2008 global financial crisis.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation has created the Deposit Insurance National Bank of Santa Clara to hold the insured deposits from SVB, which had a whopping $209bn in total assets and $175.4bn in total deposits as of December from companies like Shopify, Andreessen Horowitz, Roblox, Roku, and more.

SVB's official checks will continue to clear, but concerns have been raised that some companies may have difficulty making payroll until the regulator sells SVB's assets or another bank takes ownership of the remaining assets. SVB had announced on Wednesday that it was looking to raise over $2bn in additional capital after suffering a $1.8bn loss on asset sales.

The closure of SVB impacts not only deposits but also credit facilities and other forms of financing. Janet Yellen, U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, reassured SVB's US customers that they will have access to their funds and that policies are being discussed to recover losses while a bailout is being ruled out. However, this seems like it could change at any point.

The Big Picture: As high-interest rates and inflation create a potentially unstable financial environment, AI companies may face great challenges in their growth despite the continued development of the technology itself. On the other hand, it may be the right opportunity for AI tools to flourish and demonstrate their ability to reduce costs and increase efficiency, as companies struggle with budgetary complications.

(3 min read) (Source: Semafor)

TLDR: General Motors is reportedly developing a virtual personal assistant for its vehicles, powered by AI models similar to ChatGPT, according to insiders. The voice-activated chatbot will use Microsoft's Azure cloud service, which has exclusive rights to the OpenAI tech that also powers DALL·E, an AI system capable of creating images, and Microsoft’s Bing chatbot.

The AI assistant in GM's vehicles will have a more car-specific layer added on top of the OpenAI models, which are known for answering almost any question. The new feature could potentially enable drivers to get more specific help and guidance for a range of issues, such as changing a tire or finding a location. The automaker's partnership with Microsoft on autonomous vehicles could give it an advantage in incorporating this new technology.

(7 min read) (Source: Moderna)

TLDR: Moderna has announced a new office and expansion into Seattle to bolster its technical capacity. The site will focus on AI, cloud-based tools, and other technological applications as the company aims to recruit up to 220 workers at the location. The office will also support operations across the business, from finance to human resources, and will play a key role in Moderna's development of AI in biomedical applications.

Chief Information Officer Brad Miller said the company plans to hire rapidly in the area and build on its existing relationship with cloud provider Amazon Web Services, which supports its DNA sequencing. Moderna is seeking technical program managers, product managers and software development engineers to work at the new location.

(9 min read) (Source: Meta AI)

TLDR: Meta has launched Casual Conversations v2, an update to its 2021 AI audio-visual training dataset. This publicly available dataset offers 11 self-provided and annotated categories to measure algorithmic fairness and robustness in AI systems, with the aim of mitigating concerns around algorithmic biases in AI. Casual Conversations v2 has 26,467 video monologues recorded in seven countries featuring 5,567 paid participants and is the next generation following the original Casual Conversations consent-driven dataset.

Meta collaborated with academic partners at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology to conduct a comprehensive literature review and incorporate responsible mechanisms for data cultivation, with ethical considerations and civil rights in mind. However, experts remain cautious and urge continued scrutiny of AI-powered ecosystems. While the dataset features diversity across demographic categories, a major question remains regarding the impact of income and social status, according to experts.

💰 Funding Alerts

  1. Masttro, a leading wealth tech company serving family offices, financial advisors, and large institutions managing the wealth of ultra-high-net-worth families, has raised $43 million in growth equity investment. FTV Capital led the funding round, with participation from Citi Ventures, and the investment will accelerate Masttro's growth through market expansion and R&D for its innovative software platform, including wealth data aggregation, synthesis, and visualization, leveraging AI. The funds will also be used for cybersecurity architecture and data security protocols.

  2. wand has raised an undisclosed amount in seed funding from O’Shaughnessy Ventures LLC to grow and expand its operations. The company provides a collaborative, AI-powered creative tool for artists that emphasizes visual illustration to guide models and offers personalization by enabling artists to upload images from their portfolio to create a custom, fine-tuned AI that understands their style.

🦾 Trending Tools

  • Fini AI offers a powerful, self-serve, 24/7 interactive chat that is trained on a company's knowledge base to instantly answer customer questions. With integration to Intercom, Search, Slack, and Discord, Fini AI offers a multi-channel approach that delivers instant answers and an experience that makes customers happy. It can be configured to align with a business's ethos, with the option to choose from 20+ tone and character options.

  • Type is an AI-powered document editor designed to help users write high-quality content quickly. With its ability to generate drafts and suggest rewrites and content ideas, Type is the perfect tool for writers looking to save time while still maintaining creative control. Unlike other AI writing products, Type puts the human author at the forefront of the writing and editing process. The familiar-looking document editor is infused with helpful AI commands that understand the context of the document allowing writers to stay in the flow and be more productive.

  • Second is an innovative solution that utilizes AI developer bots to generate web applications or add full-stack features to existing ones. With Second, developers can delegate commodity features and integrations like authentication, subscription billing, and database setup to the bots, freeing them up to focus on the high-value code that is specific to their business.

  • chat.D-ID is a free web app that allows users to video chat with AI on human terms to bring a new level of interactivity and human-like experience to AI chat. Currently in beta, chat.D-ID offers a unique and innovative way to talk to an AI in a more personable manner.

👀 More Reading

🌎 Fresh Content

1. Explain it to me like I’m 5? No, I’m gonna need it in monkey, banana terms. This whole SVB debacle is very complicated but me think me understand. (Twitter)

2. Discord recently added AI features to their platform and it seems that they changed their privacy policy as well, allowing them to gather user data to train their AIs. Users were very angry with this change and have found a way to opt out of data gathering (for now). (Twitter)

3. A few weeks ago, we shared this post from Joseph Cox, a reporter for Motherboard, about how he used an AI to break into his own bank account. He recently spoke with VICE World News about how he did it and what it means for the future of AI scams. (YouTube)

🧠 Resources

This Andreessen Horowitz microsite is a guide for people who want to understand how AI can improve their software and business, even if they don't have a computer science degree. The site explores different software options, compares public cloud providers with startups, and even teaches you how to train a deep learning model to recognize business cards using Google's TensorFlow.

 📅 Upcoming Events

  1. Don’t miss the 18th Annual ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human Robot Interaction (HRI) (March 13-16, 2023 / Stockholm, Sweden + Virtual). Researchers from across the world present their best work to HRI to exchange ideas about theory, technology, data, and science furthering the state-of-the-art in the field. The conference theme for HRI 2023 is “HRI for all” and will focus on key HRI theories, methods, designs, studies, and technical advances that aim to understand and promote inclusion and diversity in HRI.

  2. The 3rd Annual European Chatbot & Conversational AI Summit (March 15-16, 2023 / In-Person at Dynamic Earth, Edinburgh, Scotland + Virtual) is a two days conference and exhibition designed to host industry executives, and adopters of Conversational AI, Chatbots, Virtual assistant, voice technology and Conversation design. The summit will reflect the latest tendencies and recent application changes in the Conversational AI space in the European market.

  3. Microsoft will be hosting a virtual event titled "The Future of Work: Reinventing Productivity with AI" (March 16, 2023 / Virtual). The event will be hosted by CEO Satya Nadella and CVP Jared Spataro, and will focus on how AI will revolutionize the way people and organizations work. While Microsoft has not disclosed any specific announcements, it is speculated that the event will primarily focus on Office.

  4. Data Innovation Summit ANZ (March 16, 2023 / Crown Conference Centre, Melbourne, Australia) is the largest and the most influential annual Data and AI event represented across several regions, bringing together the most innovative minds, enterprise practitioners, technology providers, start-up innovators and academics, working with Data Science, Big Data, ML, AI, Data Management, Data Engineering, IoT and Analytics, in one place to discuss ways to accelerate AI-driven Transformation throughout companies, industries and public organizations.

 💼 Jobs

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