Microsoft releases Phi-2 AI language model, Meta adds multimodal AI to its Ray-Ban smart glasses

Top News

Microsoft releases Phi-2, an AI language model the company says outperforms Mistral and Llama 2 at 7B and 13B parameters and is small enough to run on a phone. - Link

Meta adds multimodal AI to its Meta Ray-Ban smart glasses as an early access beta in the US, letting Meta AI answer voice queries by taking and analyzing photos. - Link

Netflix publishes its first What We Watched report, detailing the most-watched content from January to June 2023; The Night Agent was #1 with 812M+ hours viewed. - Link

BeReal plans to add Behind the Scenes, an iOS Live Photo-style feature, and RealGroups for smaller groups; Pew estimates 13% of US teens aged 13-17 use BeReal. - Link

In his first public appearance since returning to OpenAI, Sam Altman says AI is “going to lift the world up” and companies cannot build AI “safely in a vacuum.” - Link

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Startup Funding

Jitjatjo is a gig marketplace with 40k+ workers whom businesses can book with as little as an hour's notice, raised a $30M Series B led by Morningside Technology Ventures. The company has raised a total funding amount of $65M. - Link

Tacto uses AI to help companies optimize their supply chains and cut costs by ~10%. The company raised €50M led by Sequoia and Index Ventures. The company was founded in 2020 by André Petry, Johannes Groll, and Nico Bentenrieder. - Link

Essential AI, co-founded by two co-authors of Google's Attention Is All You Need paper, raised $56.5M led by March Capital. The company will use AI for corporate functions such as data analysis and automate monotonous tasks. - Link

Product Demo & Launches

Modyfi launches Motion Effects, allowing you to quickly transform your designs into scroll-stopping loops, create motion effects in seconds, and edit your motion design in real-time during playback. - Link

CRM Chat is a chatbot that lets you update your CRM on the go. You can ask the bot to access your data instantly and configure your CRM using natural language. Currently integrates with Pipedrive, HubSpot and Salesforce. - Link

Advice of the Day

Current Trends & Future Predictions of AI

Each year, tech analyst Benedict Evans produces a presentation exploring macro and strategic trends in the tech industry. This year’s presentation is titled “AI, and everything else.”

Topics covered in the 87-slide presentation:

1. Advances in AI technology and its increasing integration into various industries.

2. Predictions about the impact of AI on the global economy and job markets.

3. Ethical considerations and challenges posed by the widespread adoption of AI.

Access the presentation here.

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This Week in Startups

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E1861: Kevin O'Connor, traces his tech journey from DoubleClick to venture capitalism. Covering AI's transformative impact, startup evolution, and the challenges of convincing companies to use data, O'Connor provides insightful perspectives on successful entrepreneurship, remote work debates, and the current landscape of startup valuations and venture capital funds. - Watch

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E1859: Jason welcomes Michael Putz, CEO of Blackshark.ai, to discuss lessons from video game creation, the vision behind a digital twin of the planet, and Blackshark's programming methods. The conversation covers modern data training, In-Q-Tel's investment, a live demo of Orca Huntr, satellite imagery updates, remote work perspectives, and how Blackshark's team uses AI for efficiency. - Watch

E1858: Anne Wojcicki of 23andMe discusses the transformative journey of genome sequencing, highlighting the dramatic cost reduction to $99 and its impact on proactive health management. The conversation delves into pivotal moments in health understanding, strategies for healthcare integration, and the need for policy shifts, concluding with reflections on Wojcicki's 17-year journey and her vision for the future of health and genetics. - Watch

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