Mike Wheatley – SiliconANGLE

Report: ByteDance sets aside about $20B for AI spending this year

Mike Wheatley — Fri, 24 Jan 2025 02:44:11 +0000

TikTok’s parent company ByteDance Ltd. has set aside 150 billion yuan ($20.64 billion) for its capital expenditure this year, and the bulk of that money will be spent on boosting its artificial intelligence capabilities, Reuters reported today. The report cites two anonymous people familiar with the matter as saying that around half of the amount […]

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Palona AI gets $10M to build more reliable customer service chatbots that don’t make mistakes

Mike Wheatley — Fri, 24 Jan 2025 01:18:02 +0000

A trio of artificial intelligence engineers who previously led projects at Google LLC, Meta Platforms Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. say they have raised $10 million for a new startup that aims to make AI-powered customer sales chatbots more reliable and “emotionally attuned.” Palona AI, officially incorporated as Proactive AI Lab Inc., said today’s […]

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Trump signs new executive order on AI development, overturning Biden-era restrictions

Mike Wheatley — Thu, 23 Jan 2025 23:40:41 +0000

U.S. President Donald Trump is pushing for the development of artificial intelligence systems that are “free from ideological bias or engineered social agendas” in his latest executive order. The order, signed earlier today, is an effort to repeal previous U.S. government policies that some have interpreted as “barriers to American AI innovation.” Its chief aim […]

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Baya Systems raises $36M to transform AI chiplet design

Mike Wheatley — Thu, 23 Jan 2025 14:00:38 +0000

System-on-chip design startup Baya Systems Inc. said today it has closed on $36 million fuding to support its operational growth and accelerate the development of its software portfolio to meet the needs of the emerging “chiplet” economy. Today’s Series B round was led by Maverick Silicon and Synopsys Inc., and saw participation from existing investors […]

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WebAI’s Companion is an AI assistant for enterprise employees that runs privately on their own devices

Mike Wheatley — Thu, 23 Jan 2025 14:00:00 +0000

The privacy-focused artificial intelligence development startup webAI Inc. said today it’s rolling out a new AI-powered assistant called Companion to help large organizations “supercharge” their productivity. Companion, webAI claims, is a “breakthrough” AI assistant that can be customized to support almost any kind of enterprise workload. Theh company is known for its focus on private […]

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AI procurement management software startup Vertice raises $50M

Mike Wheatley — Thu, 23 Jan 2025 01:27:19 +0000

Procurement software startup Vertice Technology Inc. said today it has finalized a $50 million funding round led by Lakestar, bringing its total amount raised to more than $100 million, and its valuation to a reported $500 million. Perpetual Growth and CF Private Equity also participated in the Series C round, alongside existing investors Bessemer Venture […]

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Eleos gets $60M in funding to transform behavioral healthcare with AI agents

Mike Wheatley — Wed, 22 Jan 2025 23:45:19 +0000

Eleos Health Inc. said today it has closed on a $60 million Series C round of funding, and will use the money to continue its mission of trying to transform the way behavioral healthcare is delivered by empowering clinicians with artificial intelligence assistants. Today’s round was led by Greenfield Partners and saw participation from existing backers […]

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DigitalOcean dives into agentic AI creation, making it accessible to every developer

Mike Wheatley — Wed, 22 Jan 2025 16:00:17 +0000

The small developer team-focused cloud infrastructure provider DigitalOcean Holdings Inc. has become the latest company to embrace the agentic AI trend, launching a new GenAI Platform that enables teams to build and deploy AI agents in a matter of minutes. AI agents are one of the hottest trends in the artificial intelligence industry today, referring to […]

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Diesel Labs blends generative AI chat with big-data analysis to create synthetic focus groups for marketing teams

Mike Wheatley — Wed, 22 Jan 2025 14:00:52 +0000

Business intelligence startup Diesel Labs Inc. is merging generative artificial intelligence chat capabilities with its enormous, proprietary dataset on consumer attitudes to create a new tool called PanelAI that will deliver what it says are “unprecedented” consumer insights. Available now, PanelAI provides marketing and media teams with almost instantaneous access to actionable, real-time insights from […]

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API collaboration startup Postman wants to lead the charge in AI agent development

Mike Wheatley — Wed, 22 Jan 2025 14:00:48 +0000

Postman Inc., the well-funded startup that’s recognized as an industry leader in application programming interface development, says it’s getting into the business of developing artificial intelligence agents. The company says its new AI Agent Builder tool empowers companies to combine large language models with APIs and workflows to design, test and deploy intelligent AI-powered applications […]

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Nebius AI Studio adds its first text-to-image models to support creative app development

Mike Wheatley — Wed, 22 Jan 2025 13:00:54 +0000

Artificial intelligence computing infrastructure company Nebius B.V. today announced it’s updating its inference-as-a-service platform for developers with the addition of new, open-source text-to-image models. Nebius AI Studio provides a flexible, user-friendly environment for developers to get started building AI applications, and besides offering access to a vast collection of large language models, it’s also one […]

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OpenAI, Oracle and SoftBank to invest $500B in US AI infrastructure building project

Mike Wheatley — Tue, 21 Jan 2025 23:44:38 +0000

New U.S. President Donald Trump appeared alongside officials from three top technology firms to announce the creation of a new initiative called the Stargate Project, which is tasked with building up artificial intelligence infrastructure in the country. OpenAI Chief Executive Sam Altman, SoftBank Group Corp. CEO Masayoshi Son and Oracle Corp. Chairman Larry Ellison stood […]

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Render Services raises $80M to try to make AWS and other cloud infrastructure platforms obsolete

Mike Wheatley — Tue, 21 Jan 2025 16:00:42 +0000

Developer-focused cloud infrastructure startup Render Services Inc. says it’s ready to disrupt traditional giants such as Amazon Web Services Inc. and Microsoft Corp. after raising $80 million in a new round of funding. Today’s Series C round was led by Georgian and saw participation from 01A, a new venture capital firm headed by former Twitter […]

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TigerGraph revs up its graph database offering with faster setup times and new preconfigurations

Mike Wheatley — Tue, 21 Jan 2025 13:00:35 +0000

Graph database startup TigerGraph Inc. today announced a major update to its flagship cloud platform with the Savanna release, bringing with it six times faster network deployments and dozens of other new features. The well-funded startup is one of the pioneers of graph databases alongside companies such as Aerospike Inc. and Neo4J Inc. Graph databases are […]

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Merit Systems raises $10M to create a new economic model called ‘open-source capitalism’

Mike Wheatley — Fri, 17 Jan 2025 01:42:53 +0000

A pioneering startup called Merit Systems Inc. is getting a lot of attention today after raising $10 million to create a new economic model for software developers that it calls “open-source capitalism.” Today’s round was led by heavyweight investors like a16z Crypto and Blockchain Capital and also saw the participation of a number of unnamed […]

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Netradyne raises $90M to encourage safer driving with AI dashcams

Mike Wheatley — Thu, 16 Jan 2025 23:50:12 +0000

Netradyne Inc., a startup that’s using artificial intelligence and edge computing to try and improve driver safety, said today it has raised $90 million in late-stage funding. Point72 Private Investments led the Series D round, with participation from Qualcomm Ventures and Pavilion Capital. The startup’s driver safety technology is mainly targeted at companies running fleets […]

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Prophecy raises $47M to automate data pipeline development with generative AI

Mike Wheatley — Thu, 16 Jan 2025 13:00:38 +0000

Data copilot startup Prophecy Inc. said today it has closed on a $47 million Series B extension round, as it bids to transform how companies access and manipulate their corporate data with generative artificial intelligence. Today’s round was led by Smith Point Capital, and saw participation from new investor HSBC and existing backers such as […]

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NetApp sells Spot and CloudCheckr to cloud cost control company Flexera

Mike Wheatley — Thu, 16 Jan 2025 01:50:06 +0000

NetApp Inc. is selling a portfolio of its software assets to the cloud cost management specialist Flexera Software LLC. Today’s announcement revealed that Flexera will acquire parts of NetApp’s Spot by NetApp and CloudCheckr products in a deal. The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, but it’s valued at about $100 million, Bloomberg reported, […]

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Aligned Data Centers gets $12B to expand its AI compute capacity

Mike Wheatley — Thu, 16 Jan 2025 01:06:25 +0000

Data center operator Aligned Data Centers LLC said today it has raised a massive $12 billion in funding in order to accelerate the buildout of its artificial intelligence-focused infrastructure. The money came from two sources: $5 billion in primary equity from funds managed by Macquarie Asset Management and $7 billion in new debt commitments. Aligned, […]

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François Chollet reveals he’s leading a new startup that aims to make AGI a reality

Mike Wheatley — Thu, 16 Jan 2025 00:13:13 +0000

The respected artificial intelligence researcher François Chollet, who recently departed from Google LLC, has revealed in a series of posts on X that he’s launching a new startup focused on “artificial general intelligence.” In one of his posts he explained that Ndea hopes to “develop and operationalize” AGI, which is a term used to describe more […]

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ControlMonkey gets $7M in funding to automate cloud infrastructure management with code

Mike Wheatley — Wed, 15 Jan 2025 14:00:12 +0000

Terraform automation startup ControlMonkey Ltd. said today it has closed on a $7 million seed funding round co-led by Lool Ventures and Joule Ventures, which coincides with the global launch of its platform. Gaia Ventures and its founder Deepak Krishnamurthy also participated in the round, alongside a number of angel investors. The startup has built […]

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Contextual AI launches RAG 2.0 platform to aid in the development of domain-specific AI agents

Mike Wheatley — Wed, 15 Jan 2025 14:00:03 +0000

Contextual AI Inc., one of the leading players in retrieval-augmented generation systems that can advance the capabilities of large language models, today announced the general availability of its flagship product. With the launch of the Contextual AI Platform, enterprises will be able to create specialized “RAG agents” that can automate knowledge work on behalf of […]

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Qbiq raises $16M to automate architectural design and visualization with AI

Mike Wheatley — Wed, 15 Jan 2025 12:00:57 +0000

Israeli startup QbiqAI Ltd. said today it has closed on a $16 million early-stage funding round to fuel its bid to transform architectural planning with artificial intelligence smarts. The Series A round was led by the New York-based venture capital firm Insight Partners, and saw participation from the likes of JLL Spark, 10D, Random Forest, […]

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With $20M in funding, Quantum Brilliance wants to build a diamond-encased mobile quantum computer

Mike Wheatley — Wed, 15 Jan 2025 11:00:37 +0000

Quantum Brilliance GmbH said today it’s ready to begin mass production of its diamond-based quantum computers after closing on a $20 million early-stage round of funding. Today’s Series A round was led by the deep-technology fund Main Sequence, the U.S. venture capital firm In-Q-Tel and the Japanese investor Intervalley Ventures. Other participants include the Australian […]

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ChatGPT’s autonomous capabilities expand with scheduled tasks and reminders

Mike Wheatley — Wed, 15 Jan 2025 01:37:35 +0000

ChatGPT subscribers can now ask the artificial intelligence assistant to set reminders and perform certain recurring tasks on a regular basis. The new feature is called Tasks and it’s being launched in beta this week for ChatGPT Plus, Team and Pro users. Although there has been no official announcement from OpenAI, reports from VentureBeat, TechCrunch […]

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Intel to shed its venture capital arm in latest restructuring move

Mike Wheatley — Tue, 14 Jan 2025 23:35:15 +0000

Intel Corp. said today that its venture capital arm Intel Capital is being spun off into an independent entity, the latest move in a series of structural changes it’s making as it struggles to regain its mojo. By becoming a separate and standalone fund, Intel Capital will be able to raise money from outside investors, […]

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Big data company dbt Labs buys SDF Labs to improve SQL code comprehension

Mike Wheatley — Tue, 14 Jan 2025 14:00:28 +0000

Big data engineering company dbt Labs Inc. today announced it’s buying SDF Labs Inc. in a merger of acronymic startups that promises to deliver improved data velocity and quality for their customers. Philadelphia-based dbt Labs is the creator of a cloud-based data transformation tool, which can be used by companies to alter data and make […]

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OpenAI advocates for more funding and ‘AI economic zones’ to drive innovation

Mike Wheatley — Mon, 13 Jan 2025 23:53:35 +0000

OpenAI has laid out a new “economic blueprint” for the artificial intelligence industry that aims to ensure America remains at the forefront of innovation. In a blog post today that introduced the new document, the company stresses that it believes in America “because America believes in innovation,” and tries to position itself as a champion of […]

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UK PM Keir Starmer to announce new plans to transform the country into an ‘AI superpower’

Mike Wheatley — Sun, 12 Jan 2025 23:59:51 +0000

The U.K. government under Labor Prime Minister Keir Starmer is set to announce a plan Monday to implement a massive increase in the country’s computing infrastructure in order to foster the growth of homegrown artificial intelligence startups that can rival the likes of OpenAI. Under the U.K.’s “AI Opportunities Action Plan,” the government has set […]

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Salesforce brings an AI-powered digital labor force to retailers

Mike Wheatley — Fri, 10 Jan 2025 13:00:15 +0000

Salesforce Inc. is targeting retailers with its latest artificial intelligence innovations announced today, including a customized version of the Agentforce platform and a new product called Retail Cloud with Modern POS. The new tools will help to boost the productivity of store associates, digital merchants and customer service teams and help them to provide more […]

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