AI Week 29 2024 Summary
The AI industry continues to witness significant investments and groundbreaking innovations, despite a broader slowdown in venture capital funding. Big names made big AI moves, as Microsoft has introduced its AI-powered Designer app for iOS and Android, enabling users to create visually compelling content with ease using advanced AI tools. Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold 6 has also made waves with its innovative “sketch to image” AI feature, which transforms rough sketches into photorealistic images with remarkable accuracy. AI startups have a new investment pool to pull from. Moreover, Intel Capital has made its first foray into the construction tech sector seeking better efficiencies powered by AI technologies.
New $100M “Anthology Fund” Created to Fund AI Startups
Menlo Ventures announced the creation of an investment fund with Anthropic AI. The Anthology Fund, is a $100 million initiative created to fuel the next generation of AI startups. The venture capital fund focuses on five key areas:
- AI infrastructure,
- Frontier applications of AI,
- Consumer AI solutions,
- Trust and safety tooling, and
- AI applications that maximize societal benefits
By targeting these critical sectors, the fund aims to accelerate the development of groundbreaking AI technologies that can transform industries such as healthcare, legal services, financial services, and more.
Startups backed by the Anthology Fund will have access to a comprehensive suite of resources. These include leveraging Anthropic’s cutting-edge AI research and technology, particularly their advanced AI models like Claude, with $25,000 in free credits provided to each funded company. Additionally, startups will benefit from Menlo Ventures’ extensive experience in company building, a dedicated services team, and vast industry connections. This unique combination of support and resources is designed to help startups build scalable, profitable businesses and drive the responsible development and deployment of AI technologies.
The Anthology Fund also emphasizes community and collaboration. Startups will join a vibrant network of like-minded founders, researchers, and business leaders, facilitating knowledge exchange and fostering innovation. Quarterly deep dives and bi-annual demo days will be held to showcase progress and optimize the use of AI models, further enhancing the development process. This structured program is aimed at ensuring startups harness the full potential of AI to create impactful, society-benefiting applications.
You can find the Anthology Fund Application here.
Samsung’s New Sketch to Image Called “A Little Too Good”
Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold 6 introduces a groundbreaking “sketch to image” AI tool that transforms rough sketches into photorealistic images with remarkable precision. So remarkable, The Verge called it “a little too good.”
This feature leverages advanced Galaxy AI to interpret and enhance user-created drawings, whether they are simple doodles or detailed sketches, converting them into polished illustrations. Users can draw in various ways and the sophisticated AI seamlessly integrates these sketches into the images, producing results that are virtually indistinguishable from professionally rendered artwork:
- If you have a S Pen, you can open a blank drawing panel with the S Pen Air command
- Draw over gallery photos
- Annotate a selected screen area with Smart Select
- Tap Note assist menu and enhance drawings in your Notes app
The versatility of this tool is further amplified by its integration with various apps and functionalities on the Z Fold 6, such as the ability to annotate images from the Gallery, enhance drawings in the Notes app, or utilize the S Pen for precise sketching. This innovative feature not only enhances creativity and productivity but also sets a new standard for mobile AI capabilities, making it an invaluable asset for artists, designers, and everyday users looking to bring their visual ideas to life in an effortlessly realistic manner.
AI Investments Surge in the Second Quarter of 2024
According to data from Crunchbase, investments in artificial intelligence (AI) startups surged to $24 billion in the second quarter of 2024, more than doubling from the previous quarter. The surge in AI startup funding can be attributed to several factors, including the increasing demand for AI-powered solutions across various sectors, the rapid advancements in AI technologies, and the potential for AI to drive significant efficiency gains and cost savings.
The surge in AI investments comes amid a broader slowdown in venture capital funding, with U.S. startup funding dropping by nearly 30% in 2023 compared to the previous year. Despite the overall decline in startup funding, the AI sector has remained resilient, attracting substantial investments from venture capitalists and tech giants alike. These investments demonstrate the growing recognition of AI’s transformative potential and the eagerness of investors to back companies at the forefront of this technological revolution.
AI Everywhere Enabled with Microsoft’s New Design Mobile App
Microsoft has expanded its innovative Designer app, bringing its AI-powered content creation and editing tools to iOS and Android users. The app, which is now broadly available, offers a variety of features designed to help users create visually compelling content with Canva-like ease. Leveraging advanced AI, Microsoft Designer enables users to generate custom images, stickers, greeting cards, and more, all from simple text descriptions.
In addition to its mobile launch, Microsoft Designer is also deeply integrated with Microsoft Photos on Windows 11, providing users with a seamless experience when editing images. The app offers a robust suite of free tools including object erasing, background removal, auto cropping, and the application of various filters and adjustments—all powered by AI. This integration allows users to enhance their photos directly within the Photos app, streamlining the editing process and maintaining their creative flow.
With a Copilot Pro subscription, when you’re in Word and PowerPoint you can create images and designs right in the heart of your workflow.
By incorporating AI into both its mobile and desktop platforms, Microsoft Designer ensures that users can access powerful design tools wherever they are. This flexibility is further supported by the app’s consistency across different interfaces, allowing for a coherent user experience whether on a smartphone, tablet, or PC. As the digital landscape continues to evolve, Microsoft’s commitment to integrating AI technology into everyday creative tools highlights their dedication to innovation and improving user efficiency.
AI for Construction Gets a $15M Investment from Intel Capital
Intel Capital, the venture capital arm of chipmaker Intel, has led a $15 million investment in Buildots, an Israeli construction technology startup that utilizes AI and computer vision to create digital twins of construction sites. This follows a $60 million Series C round investment the company secured in March of this year, and marks Intel Capital’s first foray into the construction tech sector.
This reflects an overall growing interest in leveraging AI to optimize construction project management and budgets where a study showed 85% of construction projects over the course of a 70-year period experienced cost overruns and just 25% came close to their original deadlines.
Buildots’ innovative platform combines AI and computer vision to automate on-site progress tracking, providing construction teams with accurate data and predictive performance metrics. By using hardhat-mounted cameras to record job sites and create 4D models, Buildots’ AI technology can identify mistakes and predict delays, ultimately accelerating construction timelines and enhancing efficiency for major projects worldwide. The company’s performance-driven approach measures individual tasks to boost overall efficiency, reduce costs, and minimize delays by up to 50%.
