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- AI Startups Flourish Amid Startup Slump, Investment Rises by 57%
AI Startups Flourish Amid Startup Slump, Investment Rises by 57%
5 minute tech market update.
Kristoffer Lindström
July 11, 2024
TECH BRIEF
AI startups in the US garnered $27.1 billion in funding from April to June, making up nearly 50% of all US startup funding in that time. Overall, US startups raised $56 billion, a 57% year-on-year increase. Despite an ongoing startup slump, AI businesses are attracting large investment rounds compared to previous years. High-profile funding rounds included CoreWeave's $1.1 billion, Scale AI's $1 billion, and Elon Musk's xAI with $6 billion. These companies spent an average of 22% of their expenses on computing, double the spend of non-AI software firms.
Microsoft has withdrawn from its observer role on OpenAI's board, despite having a major financial stake in the AI firm. This move coincides with increased regulatory examination of AI investment by large tech companies like Microsoft and Amazon. Despite Microsoft's adjustment, an anonymous FTC source has indicated that concerns about the Microsoft-OpenAI partnership are not likely to be alleviated. Concurrently, Apple has reportedly decided not to join the OpenAI board.
In its move to create a social network experience around audio, Spotify has launched a feature allowing comments on podcasts. The move follows the app's 2023 revamp featuring a TikTok-like discovery feed, artist profiles, and story-posting capabilities. The streamer is also considering the extension of the comments feature to music artist pages, hinting that the changes aim to increase user engagement beyond music streaming.
Tech tycoon Elon Musk and X Corp., formerly Twitter, have won a legal fight against a $500 million claim concerning severance pay for roughly 6,000 terminated employees post-Musk's takeover. US District Judge Trina Thompson ruled the allegations were not qualified under ERISA laws as they were informed of receiving only cash payouts upon layoff.
Google's parent company, Alphabet, has reportedly abandoned plans to acquire HubSpot, causing the latter's stock to drop 15%. Previous reports suggested a potential all-stock deal or mix of stock and cash for the acquisition. Other stakeholders, including Amazon, are supposedly still interested in HubSpot.
Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth discusses the company's Metaverse strategy, the potential for VR/MR headset sales to exceed 100 million annually, and the role of AI in Meta's future. Additionally, Bosworth delves into the possibility of developers gaining access to the Quest’s raw camera feed and the challenges of shipping optical AR glasses.
QUICK
Anthropic Unveils Tools for Enhanced AI Prompt Engineering - Anthropic is streamlining AI application creation with new tools, enabling developers to auto-generate, test, and assess prompts. Notably, the firm's language model, Claude 3.5 Sonnet, could partially automate prompt engineering, saving significant time and effort.
Shift Up Corp Lists in South Korea After Record $320 Million Gaming IPO - Shift Up Corp, backed by Tencent Holdings, raised $320 million in South Korea's largest gaming IPO since Krafton. The funds will diversify its game portfolios.
Google to Enhance Samsung Devices with Updated Gemini, Wear OS 5 - Google is enhancing its Gemini for Android app and Wear OS 5 for Samsung's new devices, including an expanded "Circle to Search" feature and multiple stream viewing on YouTube.
Samsung, Google Teaming Up for XR Headset Launch Later This Year - Google and Samsung are jointly developing an extended reality (XR) headset, expected to compete with Apple Vision Pro, with a scheduled release for later this year.
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