Google today announced the launch of Tree Canopy Lab for Los Angeles, a tool that combines AI and aerial imagery to help cities see their current tree canopy coverage and plan future tree-planting projects. Google says that Tree Canopy Lab, which is a part of the company’s Environmental Insights Explorer platform, could make it easier for cities to measure, plan, and reduce carbon emissions and…
Autodesk acquires Spacemaker for $240 million to boost AI development for designers
November 26, 2020
Autodesk today announced that it has acquired Oslo-based Spacemaker for $240 million. While Autodesk CEO Andrew Anagnost said he’s excited about the potential for Spacemaker to aid urban planning, he also believes the startup’s underlying technology will help catalyze AI…
Boston-based DataRobot, a startup developing an end-to-end enterprise AI platform, today raised $270 million in an equity funding round led by Altimeter Capital. DataRobot says the pre-IPO round — which included new and existing investors T. Rowe Price, Blackrock…
EdgeQ emerges from stealth to bring AI to the edge with 5G
November 26, 2020
EdgeQ, a startup developing 5G systems-on-chip, today emerged from stealth with $51 million in funding. The 90-employee company says the fresh capital will accelerate its go-to-market efforts as it moves toward mass production of its chipset products.
With a team of semiconductor, 5G, Wi-Fi, and AI industry veterans hailing from Qualcomm, Intel, and Broadcom, EdgeQ is adopting a…
AliveCor raises $65 million to detect heart problems with AI
November 26, 2020
AliveCor, a startup developing algorithms that detect atrial fibrillation, bradycardia, tachycardia, and other health issues from heart rate readings, today raised $65 million in funding. The company says the proceeds will be used to bolster go-to-market efforts as AliveCor…
Ride Vision raises $7 million for AI that alerts motorcycle riders to collision threats
November 26, 2020
Ride Vision, a startup developing “collision aversion” technology for motorcycles, today emerged from stealth with a $7 million round led by investment platform OurCrowd. Ride Vision also unveiled an AI-driven safety alert system called Ride Vision 1 that will go on sale…
InterVenn Biosciences raises $34 million to accelerate cancer test development with AI
November 26, 2020
InterVenn Biosciences today raised $34 million to further develop its platform for precision medicine. The New York-based startup says the funds will be used to accelerate its go-to-market, expansion, and ongoing product R&D efforts.
Mass spectrometry, a technique that measures the mass-to-charge ratio of ions, can be applied to genomics studies with implications for clinical medicine. But…
Researchers investigate why popular AI algorithms classify objects by texture, not by shape
November 26, 2020
In a paper accepted to the 2020 NeurIPS conference, Google and Stanford researchers explore the bias exhibited by certain kinds of computer vision algorithms — convolutional neural networks (CNNs) — trained on the open source ImageNet dataset. Unlike humans…
AI Weekly: Tech, power, and building the Biden administration
November 26, 2020
After the defeat of Donald Trump, there was little time between Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’ celebratory speeches and the start of conversations about transition team members and key administration appointments.
Some of the first names to emerge include people with tech…
Emerging technology fields need industrywide metrics to measure progress. So a pun-loving chatbot startup called Pandorabots decided to put on a flashy Bot Battle. The Bot Battle consisted of two virtual beings chatting 24 hours a day, seven days a week for two weeks (unlike humans, AIs never tire). Viewers were invited to vote on the better chatbot.
The first contestant, “Mark Zuckerb0rg,” is…
