As August comes to a close let’s look back at what has been happening in the AI Ecosystem over the past month.We’ll kick things off with big AI investments and developments executed by Cloud Wars Top 10 stalwarts.
There’s broad consolidation in the GenAI industry, with startups are pursuing a unique strategy of licensing themselves to Big Tech companies. Character.AI, a GenAI startup that’s raised hundreds of millions, announced a deal with Google, effectively letting Google use its technology as well as hire its researchers and employees for a $2 billion fee.
In June, Adept AI had a similar deal with Amazon for $330M. Inflection AI did the same with Microsoft for $650M.
This trend of “acqui-hiring” is becoming more common. The Big Tech companies prefer these deals, which are technically not acquisitions, to avoid getting blocked by regulators while still absorbing the resources of the “acquired” company. Startups are taking these deals because there’s a long way to go before they reach sustainable profitability — despite the funds already raised.
Not showing any signs of slowing down, OpenAI has continued to ship new products. It released a new AI powered search experience called SearchGPT. This is being piloted with some test users and publishers. SearchGPT allows users to conversationally search for real-time data and receive backlinks to websites, similar to Perplexity AI.
Google is hot on OpenAI’s tail with its own GenAI search experience. Both companies continue to face IP infringement lawsuits from web publishers whose business model is at risk from these tools.
OpenAI also released its Advanced Voice Mode on the ChatGPT mobile app to let users speak conversationally with ChatGPT — and it’s at least 10x better than Siri or Alexa with more intelligent, humanlike dialogue. I highly recommend trying it out.
Regulators are focusing more and more on AI. The State of California proposed SB 1047 aimed at regulating large models to prevent their weaponization or use in cyberattacks. This bill, still unpassed, would increase accountability, holding developers responsible for their models. It has simultaneously received a lot of praise and a lot of pushback from the tech community.
Governments outside the US are starting to take steps as well. The World Economic Forum released a report on city governments that are innovating with AI. For example, Buenos Aires has been offering a chatbot for public services like vaccinations, bike sharing, and social welfare resources. Singapore was the first city-state to build its own digital twin; it’s now applying GenAI to build out countless use cases like optimizing public transport tables to multilingual public service chatbots.
The Asia-Pacific region has been rapidly pushing AI regulations:
- India is forming an AI advisory group
- Indonesia plans to have AI regulations set by the end of 2024
- Japan is preparing its Basic Law for Responsible AI
- Malaysia is developing an AI code of ethics
- Singapore introduced the Model AI Governance Framework for Generative AI
- South Korea’s AI law is under review
- Taiwan has a draft AI law open for public consultation
- Thailand is also working on AI legislation
We’ve continued to see funding rounds and M&A activity across the AI industry, although in more vertical-specific companies. Glean is in the final stages of raising $250M to help internal teams with large organizations pull data from other departments by applying GenAI to an organization’s Knowledge Graph. Canva acquired the visual AI design startup called Leonardo.AI for an undisclosed — yet certainly significant — amount. Pearl, the leading AI for dental practices, raised $85 million in a Series B round. These examples are just scratching the surface of the latest in AI funding.
The AI Ecosystem Q2 2024 Report compiles the innovations, funding, and products highlighted in AI Ecosystem Reports from the second quarter of 2024. Download now for perspectives on the companies, innovations, and solutions shaping the future of AI.