Bits and Bytes
Google won’t renew its military AI contract.
- According to company sources, Google is planning to close the military AI project after the current contract expires in March 2019. Google staff had expressed their unhappiness over project Maven earlier this year.
Nvidia Introduces HGX-2 for HPC and AI.
- Nvidia has introduced a unified computing platform HGX-2 for both artificial intelligence and high-performance The new cloud server platform allows high-precision calculations for scientific computing and simulations and will also enable AI training and inference.
Nvidia Jetson platform goes GA.
- Nvidia announced the general availability of Nvidia Isaac, which brings AI capabilities to robots for manufacturing, logistics, agriculture, construction and many other industries. The Isaac platform includes new hardware, software, and a realistic robot simulator.
Qualcomm reveals new XR platform.
- Qualcomm introduced its new dedicated Extended Reality (XR) platform Qualcomm® Snapdragon™ XR1. The XR1 platform includes an on-device AI engine so that Augmented Reality (AR) developers can take advantage of AI features like better pose prediction and object classification.
Microsoft’s AI bot also calls humans, but only in Chinese.
- After Google’s Duplex demo, which showed an AI calling to make a reservation and conversing with an employee, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella demoed a similar service at an event in London. Unlike Duplex, which is just a demo at this point, Microsoft says that thousands of users in China have conversed with its AI, called Xiaoice and it can also call for the conversation.
Intel AI Lab open-sources deep NLP library.
- Intel AI Lab has open-sourced a library for deep-learning-based natural language processing to help researchers and developers create conversational agents like chatbots and virtual assistants.
Facebook researchers demonstrate musical style transfer.
- Researchers from Facebook Artificial Intelligence Research (FAIR) have developed an AI system that can translate music between different styles. Particularly impressive was the ability to translate a whistled version of the Raiders of the Lost Ark theme song to a variety of instruments and classical styles. The accompanying paper, A Universal Music Translation Network, is available on arXiv.
Dollars & Sense
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Flock, a London-based startup focused on the use of real-time data in insurance, has raised a £2.25M Seed funding
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ForwardX, maker of Ovis, the self-driving suitcase you never knew you needed, raised $10M Series A funding
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Chinese facial recognition technology developer SenseTime Group Ltd said it has raised $620 million in a second round of funding
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Kneron, provider of edge artificial intelligence (AI) solutions, announced completion of their series A1 financing of US$18 millionled by Horizons Ventures
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Weights & Biases, a San Francisco, CA-based enterprise AI platform, received $5m in Series A funding
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Kontrol Energy Corp, a leader in the energy efficiency market announced acquisition of iDimax will be adding Artificial Intelligence (AI) across its energy software platform
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PayPal announced that it has acquired Jetlore, an artificial intelligence-powered prediction platform
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SafeToNet, the UK-based cyber safety company, has acquired the Toronto-based artificial intelligence (AI) and natural language processing startup, VISR
