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

CES 2025, taking place the week of January 5 in Las Vegas, is expected to focus on artificial intelligence, unveiling a wave of innovative offerings — whether practical, visionary or experimental. As we stand on the brink of transformative change, it’s worth recalling that early AI models often fell short when they attempted to mimic human methods. As we approach CES in service to the entertainment industry, we’ll be most interested in products that use this constant advance to assist and amplify human potential. Media applications that impact the next generation of compelling stories, production techniques, and consumer experiences will be of most interest. Continue reading CES Preview: Standing on the Brink of Transformative Change

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

Perplexity is expanding the publisher program associated with its AI-powered search engine. Added to the list of participants who will share ad revenue and access performance data are Adweek, LA Times, Mexico News Daily, The Independent, Germany’s Stern, the World Encyclopedia and about 10 other media brands. They join existing partners including Time, Fortune and Der Spiegel. Emphasizing its ongoing investment in publishers, Perplexity named Jessica Chan, formerly with LinkedIn and its content partner program, as head of publisher partnerships. News of Perplexity’s content deals appears to be generating mixed feelings in newsrooms. Continue reading Perplexity Expands Publisher Program Despite AI Controversy

Amazon Web Services is building a supercomputer in collaboration with Anthropic, the AI startup in which the e-commerce giant has an $8 billion minority stake. Hundreds of thousands of AWS’s flagship Trainium chips will be amassed in an “Ultracluster” that when it is completed in 2025 will be one of the largest supercomputers in the world for model training, Amazon says. The company announced the general availability of AWS Trainium2-powered Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) virtual servers as well as Trn2 UltraServers designed to train and deploy AI models and teased next-generation Trainium3 chips. Continue reading AWS Building Trainium-Powered Supercomputer with Anthropic

Lightricks has released an AI model called LTX Video (LTXV) it says generates five seconds of 768 x 512 resolution video (121 frames) in just four seconds, outputting in less time than it takes to watch. The model can run on consumer-grade hardware and is open source, positioning Lightricks as a mass market challenger to firms like Adobe, OpenAI, Google and their proprietary systems. “It’s time for an open-sourced video model that the global academic and developer community can build on and help shape the future of AI video,” Lightricks co-founder and CEO Zeev Farbman said. Continue reading Lightricks LTX Video Model Impresses with Speed and Motion

Nvidia has unveiled an AI sound model research project called Fugatto that “can create any combination of music, voices and sounds” based on text and audio inputs. Described by Nvidia as “the world’s most flexible sound machine,” many appear to agree that the new model represents an audio breakthrough, with the potential to generate a wide array of sounds that have not previously existed. While popular sound models from companies including Suno and ElevenLabs “can compose a song or modify a voice, none have the dexterity of the new offering,” Nvidia claims. Continue reading Nvidia AI Model Fugatto a Breakthrough in Generative Sound

Nvidia sales were up 94 percent to $35 billion in the most recent quarter when profits more than doubled, to $19.3 billion, telegraphing the strength of the artificial intelligence boom that took the company from the top supplier of graphics boards for gaming PCs to the world’s most valuable public company with a market cap of $3.59 trillion. Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang told analysts that demand for the company’s latest AI chip, Blackwell, has been “incredible,” driving projections of $3.59 trillion in revenue for the current quarter as customers begin to take shipments. Continue reading AI Boom Boosts Nvidia Sales by 94 Percent as Profits Double

Microsoft has two new chips designed for data centers. The Azure Boost DPU is Microsoft’s first data-specific chip, or data processing unit, and is designed to work with high efficiency and low power. Microsoft anticipates DPU-equipped Azure servers will be able to run storage workloads at four times the performance of those currently in place while reducing power consumption by three times. The Azure Integrated Hardware Security Module (HSM) chip allows cryptographic security keys and encryption keys to be contained in secure modules “without compromising performance or increasing latency.” Continue reading Microsoft Debuts Two New Chips Optimized for Data Centers

Nvidia has taken the wraps off Omniverse Blueprint, a real-time physics engine designed to create digital twins. The software is optimized for computational fluid dynamics (CFD), allowing virtual exploration and refinement of objects that must function in the real world — things like automobiles, airplanes, ships — that are put to everyday use and tasked for production in the field and on set. One of the first use cases is a virtual wind tunnel that lets users simulate and visualize fluid dynamics at interactive speeds, even when changing the vehicle model as it navigates the tunnel. Continue reading Nvidia Unveils Omniverse Blueprint Real-Time Physics Engine

A digital avatar may soon join the talent lineup on ESPN’s college football show “SEC Nation.” Called FACTS, the AI-generated character was developed at the ESPN Edge Innovation Center as “a way to help foster engagement and educate fans on complex sports analytics,” according to ESPN. The avatar was unveiled last week at the 4th Annual ESPN Edge Conference. Built on Nvidia’s Omniverse platform, using the company’s ACE microservices, FACTS integrates with Azure OpenAI for natural language processing and ElevenLabs for text-to-speech integration. Continue reading ESPN Readies a Data-Filled Sports Talk Host Generated by AI

Nvidia is updating its cloud-based GeForce NOW game platform with 1440p streaming, ultrawide resolution and, in lieu of a price increase, a 100-hour monthly playtime cap for new subscribers at the Priority tier (now called Performance), or Ultimate level, effective January 1. Existing Priority members will be automatically upgraded to Performance, which also lets members save in-game graphics settings across streaming sessions, including GeForce RTX features in supported titles. Ultimate members continue with RTX 4080-powered game performance of up to 4K resolution at 120 fps, or 1080p and 240 fps in Competitive mode. Continue reading Nvidia Ups GeForce NOW Gaming Cloud to 1440p Streaming

Nvidia’s growing AI arsenal now includes video search and summarization tool AI Blueprint, which helps developers build visual AI agents that analyze video and image content. The agents can answer user questions, generate summaries and even enable alerts for specific scenarios. The new feature is part of Metropolis, Nvidia’s developer toolkit for building computer vision applications using generative AI. Globally, enterprises and public organizations increasingly rely on visual information. Cameras, IoT sensors and autonomous vehicles are ingesting visual data at high rates, and visual agents can help monitor and make sense of that workflow. Continue reading Nvidia’s AI Blueprint Develops Agents to Analyze Visual Data

Runway is launching Act-One motion capture system that uses video and voice recordings to map human facial expressions onto characters using the company’s latest model, Gen-3 Alpha. Runway calls it “a significant step forward in using generative models for expressive live action and animated content.” Compared to past facial capture techniques — which typically require complex rigging — Act-One is driven directly and only by the performance of an actor, requiring “no extra equipment,” making it more likely to capture and preserve an authentic, nuanced performance, according to the company. Continue reading Runway’s Act-One Facial Capture Could Be a ‘Game Changer’

Nvidia has debuted a new AI model, Llama-3.1-Nemotron-70B-Instruct, that it claims is outperforming competitors GPT-4o from OpenAI and Anthropic’s Claude 3.5 Sonnet. The impressive showing has prompted speculation of an AI shakeup and a significant shift in Nividia’s AI strategy, which has thus far been focused primarily on chipmaking. The model was quietly released on Hugging Face, and Nvidia says as of October 1 it ranked first on three top automatic alignment benchmarks, “edging out strong frontier models” and vaulting Nvidia to the forefront of the LLM field in areas like comprehension, context and generation. Continue reading Nvidia’s Impressive AI Model Could Compete with Top Brands