Hot Takes Tuesday for 2024-07-02
Tech funding and M&A moves focus on A.I., CGI improvements, and GenAI, with potential for game-changing innovations in various industries.
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Hot Takes Tuesday for 2024-07-02
Off the cuff analysis in a rapid fire format.
A few things that caught my attention today in big funding and M&A moves in tech yesterday… and the trend was focus on A.I., CGI improvements, and GenAI, with potential for game-changing innovations in various industries.
Funds, Funding, and M&A
Techmeme: Kleiner Perkins has raised more than $2B for two new funds: $825M for a fund targeting young startups and $1.2B for a later-stage fund (Katie Roof/Bloomberg)
By Katie Roof / Bloomberg. View the full context on Techmeme.
💰 + 🎰 I'm gonna go out on a limb here and guess that those young startups will have some kind of GenAI angle and the other late-stage fund will be for companies adding a GenAI story.
Techmeme: Sources: Lambda, which rents out servers powered by Nvidia's AI chips, is in talks to raise $800M, after a $320M Series C at a $1.5B valuation in February (Financial Times)
From Financial Times. View the full context on Techmeme.
🍪 + 🤖 Because those chips aren’t going to just pay for themselves. Right? Of course, the data storage is going to be an interesting side story that unlocks innovations and valuations. Long live the algal bloom of niche service providers!
Techmeme: Source: generative AI video startup Runway is in talks to raise $450M at about a $4B valuation, with General Atlantic in talks to lead the round (Stephanie Palazzolo/The Information)
By Stephanie Palazzolo / The Information. View the full context on Techmeme.
🎥 + 🤖 If bad CGI in movies based on comic books becomes better CGI based on interesting new writers, this could be very big in the same way that self publishing unlocked a massive fan fiction market.
Techmeme: VFX company DNEG raised $200M from Abu Dhabi's UASG at a $2B+ valuation to expand its Brahma division, which is developing an AI-powered, photo-real CGI creator (Melanie Goodfellow/Deadline)
By Melanie Goodfellow / Deadline. View the full context on Techmeme.
🎥 + 🤖 Speaking of bad CGI, what if CGI didn't have to be so bad after all? If the last remaining cost in prior decades were human animators, perhaps the next cost reduction is coupled with vastly greater output in more democratized means of production.
Techmeme: Tokyo-based SmartHR, which offers cloud human resources and labor management software, raised a $140M Series E led by KKR and Teachers' Venture Growth (Kate Park/TechCrunch)
By Kate Park / TechCrunch. View the full context on Techmeme.
👥 + ☁️ Wait. There does not appear to be any reference to GenAI?!? This must be a mistake or there is a vibrant market for alternative HR software solutions delivered via SaaS.
Techmeme: Sources: Hebbia, which is developing a generative AI document search tool, raised a nearly $100M Series B led by a16z at a valuation between $700M and $800M (Marina Temkin/TechCrunch)
By Marina Temkin / TechCrunch. View the full context on Techmeme.
🗄️ + 🤖 The best RAG and GenAI demos are those demos which fundamentally alter our perception of what a good search result looks like when trying to find not just the needle in a haystack of documents, but where the needle is located in the haystack relative to the hay (document) itself.
Note: Some images via Unsplash
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