Can AI Make the PC Cool Again? Microsoft Thinks So

TECH IN THE NEWS

Not Her - Scarlett Johansson has lawyered up after OpenAI used a similar voice for the GPT-4o voice assistant after she declined to license hers.

"Proactive Intelligence" - Apple and OpenAI are set to announce at WWDC in June a partnership to bring ChatGPT tools to iOS 18

Genesis Settles - The Crypto lender agreed to pay up to $2B to investors the New York AG's office alleged were defrauded by its fund managed by the Winklevoss twins.

Going Deeper - The FDA approved Neuralink to implant the brain interface in a second patient. The chip will be implanted deeper to prevent the neural connection threads from retracting as they did last time.

Driving EU AI Growth - Google will invest $1.1B to expand its renewables-powered data center in Finland to drive EU AI business growth.

THE HOTTEST THING IN TECH
Can AI Make the PC Cool Again? Microsoft Thinks So

AI PCs are the next big thing!! Microsoft is leading this trend via its new "Copilot+ PCs" which is basically a GPT-4o-powered app for PCs. These AI PCs have built-in AI hardware and minimum spec requirements sufficient to run small multi-modal language models locally. Acer, Dell, HP, Lenovo, & Samsung are all launching Copilot+ PCs with Intel and AMD processors with Microsoft predicting 50M units sold over the year. Apple is expected to unveil its own AI-ready series at June’s WWDC event. This all lays the foundations for AI agents to integrate into our work and lives where we are.

So What is an AI PC?

To brand itself as "Copilot+" a PC must have 16GB of RAM, 256GB of SSD storage, and a neural processor capable of powering on-device AI tasks. So, what sort of abilities are we talking here?

• Inbuilt new version of Copilot Assistant for Windows;

• Upgraded Windows Search to answer requests or perform tasks;

• Recall feature logs every action taken with "photographic memory";

• Recall ensures privacy by processing data locally not in the cloud;

• Copilot+ coaches users in real-time tasks (eg Playing Minecraft);

• GPT-4o-powered screen sharing for real-time support with tasks.

AI Powering Growth

Market analyst firm Canalys predicts that 19% of all PCs shipped this year will be AI-capable, 60% by 2027, and 100% by 2030. Microsoft will also offer AMD's AI chips through its Azure cloud service, providing an alternative to Nvidia’s GPUs and Google’s TPUs in the data center AI chip market.

What it means for investors: Satya Nadella’s decade as CEO has seen Microsoft 10x its value. He is now betting it all on AI to continue this growth via AI PCs, an OpenAI partnership and backing promising AI startups.

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FOR EMPLOYERS
Job Candidates

Request an intro to candidates -  [email protected].

1. Corp General Counsel and Valuation, raised $160MM with 25-50% IRR. Ex-Morgan Lewis & Vedder Price attorney, ex-KPMG CPA, Longview Innovation. Brooklyn Law JD.

2. Lockheed Martin Software Engineer, ex-Rutgers Junior Full Stack Developer. Secret clearance. Expertise in C++, PHP, SQL. Rutgers BA in Computer Science.

3. Program Director at U.S. Army PEO Soldier, managing $2B+ budget. Ex-IVAS Program Manager and Asymmetric Warfare Group Logistics Manager. Liberty University MA.

FOR INVESTORS
Open Deals

Request an intro to founders - [email protected]

1. Multilingual Messaging Portal - Sydney, AU - Global, AWS-backed SaaS platform for businesses to communicate with clients without language barriers. $300k secured, seeking $650k for U.S. expansion. (Series A)

2. Digital Twins - Miami, FL - Applying proprietary digital twinning tech to remote patient monitoring and therapy. Over $1 million revenue projected in 2024. Grants received for DoD applications. Raising $2 million in SAFEs with 25% discount for angels and 20% discount for VCs and family offices.

3. Homepage for Founders and Investors - Irvine, CA - A platform for investors to meet founders and for founders to grow their businesses with access to high-value community members, vendors, securitization tools, and capital. (Seed)

4. AI Agent Employees - New York - Sophisticated workflow automation for businesses, by a previously-exited founder. Building towards fully autonomous organizations. Backed by Tribe & Kenetic, rolling out to extensive waitlist.

5. Outbound B2B Campaign AI Co-Pilot - Lexington, MA - Turn any CRM into an AI optimized sales agent for personalized customer campaigns. Founder previous exit to PE. Notable Angel on board. Top Hubspot App. Post revenue. (Seed)

TRENDING TOOLS AND BUZZY TECH
Tools

Vertex AI - Google Cloud’s Gemini 1.5 Pro-powered GenAI app dev site.

IDEA Research - DINO 1.5 detects and ID objects in images and videos.

Synthesia/ElevenLabs - Bring natural voices and voice cloning to videos.

Tech

Automated Vehicles - The U.K. approves driverless cars on road by 2026.

Conceivable Life Sciences - Uses robots/AI in the IVF process to save $.

Brain Freeze - Frozen human brain tissue works perfectly when thawed.

$2M Deepfake Scam - UK company suffers one of biggest-ever scams.

DEALS WE’RE WATCHING
Closed Deals:

AI Cloud Infrastructure - Nvidia-backed startup CoreWeave secured a $7.5B debt facility from BlackRock and others, to double its global data centers by year-end. Coatue led a $1.1B equity round this month at $19B.

Collaborative Data Analytics - San Fran computing startup Sigma closed a Series D at $200M at a 60% valuation bump to $1.5B co-led by Avenir Growth and Spark Capital.