Data is The New Oil Driving U.S. & UAE AI Collaboration

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∆ Tech in the News

Spying on Citizens - The Senate reauthorized Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which critics argue allows the Government to collect communications including those of U.S. citizens without a warrant. 

Tesla Troubles - Ahead of its Q1 earnings report Tesla cut prices on FSD software by 1/3 to $8k, and cut EV prices in the U.S. & China by $2k. It also recalled all 3,878 of its Cybertrucks over an accelerator pedal fault.

A-List Clones - Hollywood talent agency CAA is testing tech to clone actors to open new creative opportunities like reshooting, dubbing, and stunts.

Meta-oric - Meta’s open-source Llama 3 beat GPT-4 on the LLM leaderboard and matched Claude Sonnet and Gemini Pro. Meta also just opened up its’ Quest headset OS to 3rd party hardware makers like Xbox, Asus, and Lenovo.

AI Surpasses Humans - Stanford’s 2023 AI Index report claims AI has surpassed human-level performance across a majority of benchmarks.

The Hottest Thing in Tech this Week

Data is The New Oil Driving U.S. & UAE AI Collaboration

In a strategic move aimed at securing technological superiority and countering China's influence, the Biden administration has brokered months of strategic discussions between key U.S. tech companies and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). As a result, last week Microsoft announced a $1.5B investment in Abu Dhabi’s G42, an AI group headed by Emirati royal Sheikh Tahnoon Bin Zayed al-Nahyan, national security chief and brother of the nation’s ruler. The deal expands Microsoft's presence in the Gulf region by integrating Azure cloud services with G42's AI offerings. However, more importantly, this convergence of national and commercial interests highlights the geopolitical significance of AI.

The Microsoft deal is part of a broader effort to align U.S./UAE AI ambitions and leverage UAE’s deep petrodollar wealth to build a global hub for AI innovation in support of U.S. strategic interests. A new VC firm, MGX established by G42 and Mubadala, Abu Dhabi's sovereign wealth fund, aims to build a $100B fund dedicated to AI investments, and substantial R&D spending. G42 also partnered with OpenAI in 2023 to deliver AI solutions across the Middle East. Sam Altman has reportedly been travelling to the UAE to drive further collaboration including his $8B-$10B chip venture to reshape the semiconductor landscape.

Additionally, G42 has just partnered with Qualcomm to integrate the latter’s Cloud AI 100 products into its subsidiary Core42's Condor AI platform. G42 already partnered last year with California startup Cerebras Systems to build the Condor Galaxy network of nine interconnected supercomputers for AI model training, with 1k x the compute of a nvidia h100 GPU, one of the world’s largest AI supercomputers. Work is now underway on the third site in Texas.

This increased collaboration advances U.S. interests by establishing secure and compliant AI infrastructure and committing to best-in-class practices, while mitigating risks associated with Chinese hardware and VC. G42 was forced to end its relationship with Huawei and divest of its Chinese investments including ByteDance. This strategic alignment underscores the U.S.'s efforts to strengthen ties with key allies and maintain technological leadership in AI.

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Deals We’re Watching

Founders to Watch and Opportunities to Catch

Open Deals:

Looking to invest? Let us know if you want a warm intro —> [email protected]

1. Biometric Enabled Firearms - Colorado - One of the first companies to offer biometric security directly on the firearms for custom usage. Multiple seven figure revenues. >$25M raised so far. (Series A)

Raising for your startup? Send us your Open Round —> [email protected]

Closed Deals:

AI Compression - in December Apple quietly acquired French AI startup Datakalab which specializes in low-power deep-learning algorithms that run directly on devices.

Automated Defibrillators - San Fran medtech startup Avive Solutions raised a $56.5M Series B round for its’ smart automated external defibrillators.

Remittances on Credit Rails - San Fran ‘Send now, pay later’ startup Pomelo raised a $35M Series A from Vy Capital, Founders Fund, A* Capital, and Afore.

Solar Data Centers - Florida solar tech startup Exowatt raised $20M from Sam Altman, a16z and Atomic to power AI and data centers at lower cost.

AI-Powered Revenue Platform - Mike Carpenter-led San Fran startup Xfactor.io raised a $16M Series A from Accel and Lightspeed to enhance the efficiency of revenue teams with a range of AI-powered features.

Companies to Watch:

Rubrik - The data security unicorn is aiming for a $5.4B valuation in its U.S. IPO. The Microsoft-backed startup hopes to raise up to $713M by offering 23 million shares priced from $28 to $31. This would be the largest IPO since 2021.

Banking-as-a-Service - SoftBank-backed California BaaS startup TabaPay is buying the assets of a16z-backed startup Synapse after it filed for bankruptcy.

The Funding Buzz

[OPEN FUND] Open Opportunity Fund - Former SoftBank exec Marcelo Claure and tech veteran Paul Judge are raising $200M to back Series A stage startups led by underrepresented founders.

[OPEN FUND] Topology - Paradigm’s former investment partner Casey Caruso is setting up a new VC firm to invest in frontier tech like AI, and neurotech.

Chevron - The Oil and gas giant commits $500M to its VC arm for its third fund to invest in A to C stage startups in renewables, decarbonization, mobility, energy decentralization, and circular carbon economy.

Wellington Management - The Boston VC with $1.1T AUM closed its first climate tech fund at $385M to back 15-20 Series B to Series D-stage startups developing software, data, AI, and hardware tech to mitigate climate change.

Trending Tools and Buzzy Tech

Tools

Hugging Face - Open Medical-LLM a new benchmark for health AI models.

TikTok - Text-to-speech tool to record and clone voices in 10 seconds.

Google - SEEDS genAI model produces scalable weather forecasts cheaply.

Tech

Meta - Testing consumer neural interface watch that reads thoughts.

Intel - World's largest human brain-like 'neuromorphic computer' for faster AI.

Autonomous E-scooters - Scooters that can self-drive back to charging points.