Bits and Bytes
Google open sources exoplanet discovery AI.
- The project came out of a collaboration between Google Brain software engineer Chris Shallue and astrophysicist Andrew Vanderburg. The team was able to discover several new exoplanets and have now open-sourced their project to the public. I got a chance to talk with Chris Shallue about his work not too long ago, check out the show to learn more.
Microsoft matches human performance translating news from Chinese to English.
- The research incorporated novel methods of training translation models including dual learning, deliberation, joint training and agreement regularization.
Google’s NSynth Super is an AI synth made of Raspberry Pis.
- The tool comes out of Magenta, Google’s creative AI applications project. The synthesizer uses open source AI software to generate new sounds. I talked with Doug Eck, the Magenta project lead, about his work on generative AI for music a little while back; give it a listen.
Gluon models now deployable to AWS DeepLens.
- Gluon is an open source deep learning interface developed by AWS and Microsoft. It’s now deployable to AWS DeepLens instances for computer vision applications.
Google open-sources the AI-powered tool for portrait mode on their Pixel devices.
- The tool uses semantic image segmentation to identify optimal focal areas or areas that need higher or lower exposure.
Dollars & Sense
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SambaNova Systems, a start-up building computer processors and software for AI raises $56 million in funding led by Alphabet.
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Voci Technologies Incorporated, a provider of enterprise speech-to-text transcription and analytics, raises $8m in Series B funding.
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Percipient.ai, a provider of analytics for national security and now corporate security missions, raises $14.7M in Series A funding.
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Airspace Systems, Inc., a manufacturer of comprehensive drone defense systems, raised $20m in Series A funding.
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TaoData, a Chinese fintech startup, has raised $15.8 million in a series B round.
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Fractal Analytics, an AI solutions and analytics company, announced the acquisition of behavioral AI company Final Mile.
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L’Oréal announces the acquisition of ModiFace, an augmented reality and AI-powered beauty company.
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Avaya Holdings Corp. announced its acquisition of Spoken Communications, a Contact Center as a Service solutions application built on conversational artificial intelligence.
