Zuck addresses Apple's headset and announces gen AI plans, Cohere raises $270M

The Verge sources: Mark Zuckerberg addressed Apple’s new Vision Pro headset at a companywide meeting, saying Apple’s vision of the future of computing is not the one he wants, as Meta aims for a more social, interactive experience with its XR products - Link

Axios sources: Zuckerberg also announced plans to integrate generative AI text, image, and video tools into Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp - Link

Bloomberg sources: Cohere, a Toronto-based startup building NLP and LLM tools for enterprise customers, raised $270M at a valuation between $2.1B-$2.2B - Link

Bloomberg sources: TikTok is targeting $20B in global e-commerce GMV this year, which would be up more than 4x from 2022, primarily due to growth in SE Asia - Link

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Replika Co-Founder and CEO Eugenia Kuyda breaks down her startup’s origin story and purpose (1:43), the relationships users have with its AI chatbot (10:21), the potential of AI therapists, Replika’s new chatbot Blush, and more! (35:10) - Link

Pigment, a Paris-based startup building business planning and forecasting software to take on Excel, raised an $88M Series C led by Iconiq Growth; the company grew revenue 600% in 2022 - Link

Digibee, a startup building a low-code platform for workflow integrations, raised a $60M Series B led by Goldman Sachs; the company was founded in 2017 and has raised >$90M so far - Link

Contextual AI, a startup building LLMs for enterprise customers, raised a $20M Seed led by Bain; the company, founded by former Hugging Face employees, utilizes “retrieval augmented generation” (RAG) to boost the performance of its LLMs - Link

California’s DMV issued Mercedes-Benz the first permit to sell or lease vehicles with a “hands-free, eyes-off” automated driving system - Link

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