The AI Rundown by Lightscape Partners - 07/15/24

Good morning, and happy Monday and welcome back to another week of The AI Rundown by Lightscape Partners.

Last week in AI:

• Standard Bots raises $63M to bring its collaborative robotic arms to market. Led by General Catalyst, Lightscape Partners participated in the round and looks forward to helping Evan Beard, CEO, scale the company.

• In addition to Standard Bots, Lightscape Partners added two more startups to its portfolio: Toggle AI and Vizit. More details to come.

• Last week saw a ton of action in the venture space, with multiple $100M+ rounds announced, acquisitions, and more.

Keep reading to catch up on last week in AI.

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Top AI Story of the Week

Standard Bots raises $63M to bring cobot arms to market. Link.

• Standard Bots has raised $63 million in a Series B funding round led by General Catalyst, with participation from the Amazon Industrial Innovation Fund, Samsung Next, and Lightscape Partners.

• The funding will go to expanding the company's engineering team and developing next-generation collaborative robots (cobots), which aim to make advanced robotics accessible across various industries.

• Standard Bots' technology focuses on creating intuitive, AI-powered robots that can learn tasks from human demonstrations.

• General Catalyst’s Max Rimpel will join the startup’s board.

Lightscape Partners believes AI will accelerate robotics and is excited to back Evan Beard and his team at Standard Bots.

Venture Funding and Acquisitions

Hebbia raises $130M at a $700M valuation. Link.

• The round was led by Andreessen Horowitz, with participation from Index Ventures, Google Ventures, and Peter Thiel.

• Hebbia, founded by George Sivulka in 2020, uses generative AI to search large documents and answer complex queries, and its revenue has grown by 15 times over the past 18 months.

• The company's main product, Matrix, is widely used by financial institutions for due diligence and asset pricing, and the new funds will help expand its team and offerings into sectors like law and pharmaceuticals​

• With ~$13M of ARR, investors valued the company at approximately 54x ARR.

Skild AI raises $300M Series A to build a robotics foundation model. Link.

• Skild AI raised $300 million in Series A funding, achieving a $1.5 billion valuation.

• The startup, founded by former Carnegie Mellon professors, is developing a versatile AI model to serve as a general-purpose brain for robots across various industries.

• The round was led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, Coatue, SoftBank Group, and Jeff Bezos, with participation from notable investors like Sequoia.

Index Ventures raises $2.3B to fund tech startups globally. Link.

• Index Ventures has raised $2.3 billion for new venture and growth funds.

• This includes $800 million for its 12th venture fund and $1.5 billion for its 7th growth fund.

• These funds will support tech startups at various stages of their development. Index Ventures aims to back the next generation of tech innovators and continue its role in shaping the future of technology.

AMD is acquiring Silo AI for $665M. Link.

• AMD has announced its plan to acquire the Finnish artificial intelligence startup Silo AI for approximately $665 million in cash.

• Silo AI, known as one of Europe’s largest private AI labs, specializes in developing custom large language models and AI-driven solutions for enterprise clients.

• The acquisition will allow AMD to accelerate the development and deployment of AI models powered by its chips, integrating Silo AI’s expertise into its product offerings.

Humane execs leave to start their own AI fact-checking startup. Link.

• Two key executives from Humane, a company known for its viral “AI Pin” hardware, have left to start a new AI fact-checking startup called Infactory.

• This new venture aims to develop a fact-checking search engine focused on verifying data.

• The departure of these executives from Humane, founded by ex-Apple employees, marks a significant move as they aim to address misinformation using advanced AI technologies.

Big Tech

Open AI researcher quits, calling the company the “Titanic of AI”. Link.

• William Saunders, a former member of OpenAI's Superalignment team, resigned after realizing the company prioritized profit over safety.

• He compared OpenAI to the Titanic, emphasizing the risks of insufficient safeguards.

• Saunders criticized OpenAI for focusing on new products instead of ensuring safety, leading to concerns about the development of artificial general intelligence (AGI).

• Despite CEO Sam Altman's claims of safe AGI development, Saunders believes OpenAI should take more comprehensive steps to mitigate risks, similar to NASA's Apollo program.

Apple and Microsoft vacate OpenAI board seats. Link.

• Microsoft and Apple have relinquished their observer seats on the board of OpenAI amid increasing regulatory scrutiny.

• Microsoft, which had secured its non-voting seat in late 2023 following a brief ouster and reinstatement of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, stated that its participation was no longer necessary due to improvements in OpenAI's governance.

• This move comes as antitrust regulators in the EU, US, and UK intensify their examination of major tech companies’ influence over AI startups.​

Portfolio Updates

• Shield AI’s VBAT was selected for a $198M contract to provide the US Coast Guard with Maritime Unmanned Aircraft System Services. Link.

AI Data Infrastructure Market Map

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