AI & RoboticsNews

Hyundai acquires majority stake in robot maker Boston Dynamics

December 11, 2020
(Reuters) — Hyundai and its chairman have agreed to buy an 80% stake in robot maker Boston Dynamics from SoftBank, Hyundai said on Friday. Hyundai said the deal values the robot firm at $1.1 billion, suggesting the automaker group offered $880 million for the 80% stake. Hyundai can leverage robot technology to expand automation at its unionised car factories, as well as design autonomous…
Read more
AI & RoboticsNews

Papercup raises $10.5 million to dub videos with AI-generated speech

December 10, 2020
Papercup, a U.K.-based startup developing speech translation technology for video creators, has raised $10.5 million in venture funding. The company says the funds will be put toward machine learning research and expanding its human-in-the-loop quality control feature for customers’ AI-translated videos. Most of the world’s videos have been recorded in a single language. For example, 33% of…
Read more
AI & RoboticsNews

SoftBank has reportedly sold Boston Dynamics to Hyundai

December 10, 2020
Hyundai Motors is acquiring Boston Dynamics, according to The Korea Economic Daily. The publication says Softbank has agreed to sell the robot maker for 1 trillion won (US$917 million) and that the acquisition will be finalized at a board meeting today, December 10th. The…
AI & RoboticsNews

Google will investigate the controversial exit of a top AI ethicist

December 10, 2020
Google CEO Sundar Pichai has pledged to investigate the departure of a top AI ethics researcher, according to a company-wide memo Axios obtained. Pichai also apologized for how Google handled Dr. Timnit Gebru’s exit.  “I’ve heard the reaction to Dr. Gebru’s departure loud and clear: it seeded doubts and led some in our community to question their place at Google,” Pichai…
Read more
AI & RoboticsNews

Parallel Domain raises $11 million to generate synthetic data for AI model training

December 9, 2020
Parallel Domain, a startup developing a synthetic data generation platform for AI and machine learning applications, today emerged from stealth with $11 million in funding. The company, which has over 25 employees and customers in auto manufacturing and drone delivery, plans to use the capital to accelerate its go-to-market efforts as it expands its product footprint. Self-driving vehicle…
Read more