Quick Hits

Air evolution: Apple ditches wedge.

Austin autonomy: Waymo starts driverless rides.

Bitcoin breakthrough: Currency tops $69k.

Coachella collab: Fest partners with OpenSea.

Consulting bots: Accenture partners with Cohere.

Drone defense: Brits invest in AI drone tech.

Electric muscle: Dodge unveils EV Charger.

Eco earbuds: Skullcandy goes battery-free.

Frosty fusion: Snowflake, Mistral AI team up.

Groq grows: Platform adds dev playground.

Hydrogen highway: GM develops fuel-cell trucks.

Inspired investing: Fund targets 'fearless founders.'

Text-to-video: OpenAI acquires Sora.

Social snafu: Facebook, Instagram restore service.

ChatGPT triggers talent search

AI job postings surged 42% since ChatGPT's debut, as Big Tech (Amazon, Google, Apple) and others, like UPS, shift resources to pay top dollar for machine learning engineers and data scientists.

Text-to-video inspires pivot for DeepMind alums

DeepMind alums launched Haiper, an AI video generator backed by $13.8M to rival OpenAI's Sora. The duo pivoted from 3D reconstruction 6 months ago because they found text-to-video "more fascinating."

Engineer: Claude 3 demonstrates 'meta-awareness'

A prompt engineer claims Claude 3 demonstrated meta-awareness during a test, recognizing an artificially inserted query.

Figure rises with Big Tech backing

Figure, a humanoid robotics startup valued at $2.6B, raised $675M from Microsoft, OpenAI, Nvidia, Bezos Expeditions and others. Its aluminum Figure 01 prototype walks slowly and awkwardly but has dexterous hands. Figure aims to build robots that can "process and reason from language."

MIT's inhalable nanosensors help detect cancer

MIT developed inhalable nanosensors that allow for early lung cancer detection through a simple urine test rather than a costly CT scans.

Poll of the week

Recently funded companies

Indian Defense Startup Newspace Raises Record High $52M

Yolk Raises $1.25M for Text-Free Social App

Moonhub Raises $1.4M for VR Training

Readygg Raises $4M for Web3 Gaming

TravelJoy Backed by $10M Series A for Travel Planning

Metaplane Nets $13M to Detect AI Data Anomalies

Filigran Secures $16M for Threat Management

Multiverse Computing Raises $27M for Quantum-Inspired Algorithms

Post of the week

What we're reading

Why India's thriving software talent base is important for the Seattle innovation ecosystem (GeekWire)
TikTok Parent ByteDance Launches New Share Buyback After Rise in Revenue (WSJ)
What's up with Generation Z? (The Guardian)
Decoding the Geometry of Music: 70-Year-Old Math Problem Solved (SciTechDaily)
'Dune: Part Two' Gives Sci-Fi-Obsessed Silicon Valley a Reason to Party (NYT)