Twelve Labs has raised $30 million in funding for its efforts to train video-analyzing models. The San Francisco-based company has received strategic investments from notable enterprise infrastructure providers Databricks and SK Telecom as well as Snowflake Ventures and HubSpot Ventures. Twelve Labs targets customers using video across a variety of fields including media and entertainment, professional sports leagues, content creators and business users. The funding coincides with the release of Twelve Labs’ new video foundation model, Marengo 2.7, which applies a multi-vector approach to video understanding. Continue reading Twelve Labs Creating AI That Can Search and Analyze Video

Ayar Labs, which develops optical interconnect chips for large-scale AI workloads, has secured $155 million in financing, including from competing processor companies Nvidia, Intel and AMD. Founded in 2017, the Silicon Valley-based company is pursuing a different processing path — combining photonic elements with electronic circuits on each chip for what it says provides faster, more efficient processing for artificial intelligence and high-performance computing. “This brings the company’s total funding to $370 million and raises the company’s valuation to above $1 billion,” Ayar notes, adding that the new funding allows the company to scale its optical I/O tech. Continue reading Nvidia, Intel and AMD Invest in AI Chiplet Developer Ayar Labs

Promise is a new entertainment studio launched around the potential of generative AI. The Los Angeles-based startup is developing a multiyear slate of films, TV shows and media in “new formats.” With funding led by Peter Chernin’s North Road Company and Andreessen Horowitz, Promise vows to set “a new standard for high-quality storytelling enabled by AI.” The firm is also working on new tools to optimize the generative workflow. The first product, MUSE, “integrates the latest GenAI technology throughout the creative process in a streamlined, collaborative, and secure production environment.” Continue reading Promise Is an Entertainment Studio Built Around Generative AI

Particle, the AI-powered news aggregator created by a pair of Twitter alums, has launched after a year in beta. The iOS app summarizes current events in quick hits the startup says do not violate the copyrights of publishers whose news it shares. Instead of simply scraping publishers’ work for proprietary use, the startup seeks to compensate publishers and drive traffic to news sites with prominent links to sources accompanying each AI news summary. Developed by Sara Beykpour and Marcel Molina, Particle has raised more than $11 million in early funding led by Lightspeed. Continue reading Particle Launches AI News App That Summarizes in Quick Hits

Panjaya is a AI startup that aims to disrupt the world of video dubbing with a way to generate “hyperrealistic” recreations of a person’s voice speaking a new language. The system also automatically modifies the imagery to match lip and other physical movements to match the new speech patterns. Called BodyTalk, the technique is the launch point for Panjaya as it emerges from the stealth in which it conducted its R&D the past three years, backed by $9.5 million from venture funds and angel backers. The startup describes BodyTalk as “AI dubbing that looks and feels as natural as the original.” Continue reading BodyTalk Dubs into 29 Languages with Facial Moves to Match

AI startup Liquid, founded by alums of MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), has released its first models. Called Liquid Foundation Models, or LFMs, the multimodal family approaches “intelligence” differently than the pre-trained transformer models that dominate the field. Instead, the LFMs take a path of “first principles,” which MIT describes as “the same way engineers build engines, cars, and airplanes,” explaining that the models are large neural networks with computational units “steeped in theories of dynamic systems, signal processing and numeric linear algebra.” Continue reading MIT Spinoff Liquid Eschews GPTs for Its Fluid Approach to AI

Artificial intelligence platform Runway has launched The Hundred Film Fund to help finance 100 projects that use its AI to tell stories. Created by the company through its Runway Studios, the Fund is starting with $5 million, “with the potential to grow to $10 million.” Runway is presenting the Fund as “an open call to all creative professionals who have AI-augmented film projects in the pre- or post-production phases and are in need of funding.” Directors, producers and screenwriters are among those invited to apply. The program will consider all formats, from features to shorts, documentaries, experimental projects, music videos and more. Continue reading Runway Launches $5M AI Film Fund as Open Call to Creators

OpenAI co-founder and former chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, who exited the company in May after a power struggle with CEO Sam Altman, has raised $1 billion for his new venture, Safe Superintelligence (SSI). The cash infusion from major Silicon Valley venture capital firms including Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital, DST Global, SV Angel and NFDG has resulted in a $5 billion valuation for the startup. As its name implies, SSI is focused on developing artificial intelligence that does not pose a threat to humanity, a goal that will be pursued “in a straight shot” with “one product,” Sutskever has stated. Continue reading Safe Superintelligence Raises $1 Billion to Develop Ethical AI

Canadian generative video startup Viggle AI, which specializes in character motion, has raised $19 million in Series A funding. Viggle was founded in 2022 on the premise of providing a simplified process “to create lifelike animations using simple text-to-video or image-to-video prompts.” The result has been robust adoption among meme creators, with many viral videos circulating among social media platforms powered by Viggle, including one featuring Joaquin Phoenix as the Joker mimicking the movements of rapper Lil Yachty. Viggle’s Discord community has four million members including “both novice and experienced animators,” according to the company. Continue reading Viggle AI Raises $19 Million on the Power of Memes and More

Generative video creation and editing platform Captions has raised $60 million in Series C funding. Founded in 2021 by former Microsoft engineer Gaurav Misra and Goldman Sachs alum Dwight Churchill, the company’s technologies — Lipdub, AI Edit and the 3D avatar app AI Creator — have amassed more than 10 million downloads for mobile, the firm says. The C round brings its total raise to $100 million for a stated market valuation of $500 million. With the new funding, Captions plans to expand its presence in New York City, which is “emerging as the epicenter for AI research,” according to Misra. Continue reading Captions: Generative Video Startup Raises $60 Million in NYC

Elon Musk’s xAI has secured $6 billion in Series B funding. While the company says the funds will be “used to take xAI’s first products to market, build advanced infrastructure, and accelerate the research and development,” some outlets are reporting a significant portion is earmarked to build an AI supercomputer to power the next generation of its foundation model Grok. The company publicly released the open-source Grok-1 as a chatbot on X social in November, and recently debuted Grok-1.5 and 1.5V iterations with long-context capability and image understanding. Continue reading Musk Said to Envision Supercomputer as xAI Raises $6 Billion

Music startup Suno, which leverages ChatGPT tech with the goal of emulating that app’s success in music, has raised $125 million in Series B funding, resulting in a valuation of $500 million. Founded by Harvard physics PhD turned tech entrepreneur Mikey Shulman, the company is being called “a rising star” in the realm of generative AI. Suno lets people generate original songs by using text prompts or lyrics, with the AI supplying the melodies and harmonies for fully-formed compositions. “We started Suno to build a future where anyone can make music,” according to the company. Continue reading AI Startup Suno Raises Funds to ‘Democratize Music Creation’

The Biden Administration has opened a call for applications for $285 million in funding for a national research institute that will develop semiconductor “digital twins,” software representations of semiconductor hardware that live in the cloud, where teams can collaborate remotely to design, test and analyze the components, allowing engineers to discover and address problems before the manufacturing process begins. The CHIPS Manufacturing USA institute will be the hub for companies and organizations advancing this work, which is meant to decrease domestic reliance on foreign-sourced chips as a matter of national security. Continue reading Government Commits $285 Million for ‘Digital Twin’ Research

Perplexity is a year-old AI startup whose conversational “answer engine” has gained attention as a potential challenger to conventional search. Two months ago the venture raised $73.6 million in Series B funding from investors including Nvidia and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos via his Bezos Expeditions, resulting in a valuation of about $520 million. Now the company is said to be finalizing another cash infusion that is predicted to double its valuation to roughly $1 billion. The current financing round is reportedly being led by former Y Combinator partner Daniel Gross through his own investment fund. Continue reading AI Startup Perplexity Targets $1B Valuation with New Funding

Ad tech platform Vibe has raised $22.5 million in a Series A funding round led by venture firm Singular. Vibe plans to use the funds to “continue building a more efficient streaming TV advertising ecosystem and become the No. 1 connected TV ad resource for small and midsize businesses,” or SMBs. Vibe, which calls itself the “Google Ads of streaming,” says its technology “radically democratizes access to streaming TV advertising for SMBs with an easy-to-use ad platform mimicking the power and ease-of-use of Google or Meta, but for CTV and OTT.” Continue reading Ad Firm Vibe Looks to Serve as the ‘Google Ads of Streaming’