Institute of AI

Tech is in an acceleration mode and AI will be even faster! 

Despite huge developments in materials science and metallurgy, today’s electric motors, whether they’re tiny or enormous, share that same exact basic design.  And with that design come limitations.  One of the biggest limitations is the efficiency curve. Every electric motor has a single ideal rotational speed where efficiency is at its peak.  It’s at that speed that the motor puts out the most torque for the energy invested. Spin it faster or slower, and the power-to-energy-invested ratio begins to drop off.  When this drop-off takes place, not only is energy lost to inefficiency but resistance and heat increase as well.  With added heat comes additional wear and tear and a shortened service life.  Engineers have been living with this limitation from the very beginning of the story of the electric motor.  They’ve invented transmissions to minimize the effects, but in the end, more add-ons only complicated the mechanism, adding yet more inefficiency to...

  Murf Topping our list of best AI tools for business is the text speech generator Murf, which is one of the most popular and impressive AI voice generators on the market. Murf enables anyone to convert text to speech, voice-overs, and dictations, and it is used by a wide range of professionals like product developers, podcasters, educators, and business leaders.  Murf offers a lot of customization options to help you create the best natural-sounding voices. It has a variety of voices and dialects that you can choose from, as well as an easy-to-use interface. The text to speech generator provides users with a comprehensive AI voice-over studio that includes a built-in video editor, which enables you to create a video with voiceover. There are over 100 AI voices from 15 languages, and you can select preferences such as Speaker, Accents/Voice Styles, and Tone or Purpose.  Another top feature offered by Murf is the voice changer, which allows you to record without using your...

  Nuro Headquarters:  Mountain View Founders : Jiajun Zhu (CEO), Dave Ferguson Funding:  $1.03 billion Valuation:  $2.7 billion After working for more than five years each on Google’s self-driving project, Dave Ferguson and Jiajun Zhu were done trying to ferry people around in autonomous vehicles. So, they ditched humans for local goods. Nuro’s driverless delivery vehicles have completed thousands of trips to shoppers through a partnership with Kroger in Texas. Shifting from people to pasta and Poptarts eliminates safety and technical constraints. “You can drive more conservatively because you don’t have someone inside the vehicle that’s getting frustrated,” Ferguson says.

  Uptake Headquarters:  Chicago Founders : Brad Keywell Funding:  $258 million Valuation:  $2.3 billion, via Pitchbook Uptake CEO Brad Keywell says his company is in the business of making sure things work, “whether it’s the U.S. Army’s Bradley Fighting Vehicle, or the components that make up Rolls-Royce’s fleet of market-leading engines.” It’s brought in more than 100 industrial customers on its way to a $2.3 billion valuation. With a huge database of machine failures at its disposal, the five-year-old company leverages artificial intelligence to analyze how its customers’ machines can run better and avoid these failures. “There is no more guesswork or operating blindly involved,” says Keywell, who cofounded Groupon before founding Uptake.

  Dataminr Headquarters:  New York City Founders : Ted Bailey (CEO) Funding:  $577 million  Valuation:  $1.59 billion, via Pitchbook Dataminr ingests public internet data, like social media posts, and uses deep learning, natural language processing, and advanced statistical modeling to send users tailored alerts. The company has more than 500 clients paying its subscription fees, including Amazon, CNN, and The United Nations, which uses the system to find early signs of potential humanitarian crises around the world.

  Anduril Industries   Headquarters:  Irvine, CA Founders : Palmer Luckey, Brian Schimpf (CEO), Trae Stephens, Matt Grimm, Joe Chen Funding:  $180 million Valuation:  Just under $1 billion Former Oculus cofounder Palmer Luckey is back after his dramatic exit from Facebook (he  has hinted  that the company fired him from the virtual reality unit for his political views,  which it denies ) with a defense technology startup called Anduril Industries, founded in 2017. The company makes a threat-detection system, using data from sensors mounted on towers, drones, and vehicles to create a real-time, 3D model of an area. It has contracts with the  Marine Corps  and  UK’s Royal Navy , as well as with Customs and Border Protection for what has been described as a  controversial “virtual border wall.”  Following  a report  that it became a unicorn after a recent fundraise, the company confirmed to  Forbes  that i...

  Fundbox  Headquarters:  San Francisco Founders : Eyal Shinar (CEO), Tomer Michaeli, Yuval Ariav Funding:  $140 million  Valuation:  $750 million Fundbox has a data-driven take on lending that facilitates loans to small businesses rather than regular people. Founder Eyal Shinar says that seeing his mother, who ran a staffing agency, struggle with cash flow inspired the idea of advancing customers for outstanding invoices. A company that wants a loan through Fundbox connects their existing finance tools to its platform, which then uses these data streams to assess risk and either approve the loan or not. Shinar says that process can take as little as three minutes. 

  Bright Machines  Headquarters:  San Francisco  Founder : Amar Hanspal (CEO), Tzahi Rodrig, Lior Susan  Funding : $200 million    Valuation : $679 million, via Pitchbook While factories have become increasingly automated over recent decades, Bright Machines believes that robotic systems are finally ready for primetime deployment. “Until now, the most complex operations in manufacturing have been too difficult for blind and dumb robots to perform with the same precision and fidelity as humans,” says CEO Amar Hanspal, adding that advances in computer vision and machine learning have changed the game. The company just released its first product in June: So-called “microfactories,” or closed systems with robotic arms that can complete tasks like inserting chips in a circuit board. 

  Verkada Headquarters:  San Mateo, CA Founders : Filip Kaliszan (CEO), Hans Robertson, James Ren, Benjamin Bercovitz Funding:  $59 million Valuation:  $540 million  Verkada  has only been selling its products for two years, but it has already boomed to a $540 million valuation and more than 1,200 customers. A lineup of cloud-connected security cameras equipped with AI-driven features like object and movement detection has driven growth at Verkada, whose cofounders are three Stanford computer science graduates and the cofounder of enterprise cloud company Meraki, which sold to Cisco for more than $1 billion. Among the company’s wide-ranging list of clients are fitness club Equinox, the $1.1 billion Vancouver Mall and more than 500 school districts, which use the cameras for anything from monitoring student safety to tracking food deliveries. It earned a spot on  Forbes’  list of  Next Billion-Dollar Startups earlier this year .

Standard Cognition  Headquarters: San Francisco  Founders: Jordan Fisher (CEO), Michael Suswal, David Valdman, John Novack, Brandon Ogle, Dan Fischetti, TJ Lutz  Funding: $86 million  Valuation: $535 million Goodbye, cashiers. Hello, cameras. Standard Cognition is working on an autonomous checkout system where shoppers can wander through a store, picking out goods and pay without scanning their items or interacting with an employee. Its overhead cameras track individuals and items continuously (notably, its so-called entity cohesion doesn’t rely on facial recognition, which it says gives shoppers more privacy). “We have essentially created autonomous checkout for everyone who is not Amazon,” the company says. Standard Cognition has opened a pop-up in San Francisco to show off its tech and says that it’s in “shadow mode” testing in several stores in North America. 

  People.ai   Oleg Rogynskyy of People Ai Headquarters:  San Francisco Founder : Oleg Rogynskyy (CEO) Funding:  $100 million Valuation:  $500 million, via Pitchbook People.ai CEO Oleg Rogynskyy says he’ll never forget the moment he realized how much time salespeople spend doing nonsales things. At the time, he was an early employee at a company called Nstein Technologies. “The COO of Nstein grounded the whole sales team for a week in a sweaty, windowless conference room to go and clean up our Salesforce,” Rogynskyy recalls. That week inspired him to address “bad” customer relationship management data head-on, he says. In 2016, Rogynskyy founded People.ai, which integrates into CRM systems like Salesforce and automatically inputs relevant data from email, calendars, Slack chats and more, and advises salespeople on the “best” tasks to focus on. VMware, Zoom, New Relic and Lyft are all customers. 

  Matterport Headquarters:  Sunnyvale, CA Founders : Matt Bell, David Gausebeck, Michael Beebe (no longer active employee) - (CEO: RJ Pittman) Funding:  $115 million, via Pitchbook Valuation:  $355 million, via Pitchbook Matterport makes hardware and software for creating realistic 3D models. Its image processing technology, called Cortex, works with its own 3D camera, as well as a selection of cheaper 360-degree cameras, to let users create virtual versions of their space. The company’s leaning into the real estate market,  showcasing how agents can use it to give 3D tours.  

  Brain Corp. Headquarters:  San Diego Founders : Eugene Izhikevich (CEO), Allen Gruber Funding:  $125 million Valuation:  $240 million via Pitchbook Brain Corp. aims to upgrade dumb machinery with robotic software. It’s tackling the world of floor-cleaning equipment first, partnering with manufacturers to make their machines better at avoiding obstacles in busy environments. Walmart announced earlier this year that nearly 2,000 stores will be humming with BrainOS-powered cleaners by the end of 2019. “I have always dreamed of building artificial brains,” says neurobiology researcher and CEO Eugene Izhikevich. “Starting Brain Corp. gave me this opportunity.”

  ClimaCell  Headquarters:  Boston  Founders : Shimon Elkabetz (CEO), Rei Goffer, Itai Zlotnik  Funding:  $80 million  Valuation:  $217 million, via Pitchbook ClimaCell ’s cofounders all had what CEO Shimon Elkabetz describes as “life-threatening experiences due to poor weather forecasts” while serving in the Israeli military, inspiring them to try to find a way to make predictions more accurate. The company uses vast quantities of nontraditional data—like signals from cellphones, internet-of-things devices and street cameras—to issue hyperlocal “street-by-street, minute-by-minute” weather forecasts. More than 150 corporate customers, including JetBlue, the New England Patriots and ride-sharing service Via, are shelling out for its real-time predictions. 

  Rev.com Headquarters : Austin, TX Founder : Jason Chicola (CEO), David Abrameto, Mark Chen, Paul Huck, Dan Kokotov.  Funding : $31 million Valuation : $206 million In June, transcription service Rev.com said that its tests show that its word error rate on podcast transcriptions was lower than what Google, Amazon or Microsoft’s tools produced. While developers can buy access to that completely automated speech recognition engine, its network of freelance transcribers also use it to make their client work easier and faster. CEO Jason Chicola says this hybrid approach leads to higher- quality, cheaper transcriptions. “Language is incredibly complex—think accents, mumbling, arcane terminology, bad microphones, background noise,” says Chicola. “Humans are far, far better at making judgment calls for these real-world factors.”

  Pymetrics   Frida Polli of Pymetrics Headquarters:  New York City Founders : Frida Polli (CEO)  Funding:  $56.6 million  Valuation:  $190 million, via Pitchbook Online recruiting platform Pymetrics helps companies find the right hires by looking beyond experiences and skills on a résumé. Its more than 80 enterprise customers, including LinkedIn, Accenture, MasterCard and Unilever have current, top-performing employees complete the platform’s set of assessments. Pymetrics gleans key emotional and cognitive traits for different roles so when job seekers apply to work at one of those companies and complete the challenges themselves, they’re paired with jobs that are the best fit. Companies can also use the platform for internal career development. “It makes the process more efficient with better outcomes and increases diversity tremendously,” says CEO and neuropsychology Ph.D. Frida Polli. Pymetrics open-sources its algorithm auditing tool, aimed at pre...

  Bossa Nova Robotics Headquarters:  San Francisco  Founders : Sarjoun Skaff, Martin Hitch (CEO: Bruce McWilliams) Funding:  $76.57 million, via Pitchbook Valuation:  $179 million, via Pitchbook If you find yourself in a Walmart, keep your eyes peeled for a big, slow-moving robot gliding up and down the aisles. It’s the brainchild of robotics startup Bossa Nova and is rolling out to 350 stores around the country to help keep shelves well stocked. Its system reads price labels for discrepancies and finds gaps on shelves so it can alert workers about any problems. Chief technology officer Sarjoun Skaff says it has taken iteration after iteration since 2013 to figure out how to let its robots maneuver safely around shoppers and interpret billions of images in a way that was accurate, timely and reliable.

  Tamr Headquarters:  Cambridge, MA Founders : Andy Palmer (CEO), Ihab Ilyas, Mike Stonebraker  Funding:  $73.5 million Valuation:  $155 million, via Pitchbook Data management company Tamr was born out of an MIT research project to apply machine learning to clean and organize so-called dirty data that’s incomplete or inconsistent. Andy Palmer was running data engineering at pharmaceutical company Novartis when MIT’s system was brought in to organize a decade’s worth of biological assay information spread across more than 15,000 tables. The technology worked so well that he and two of the researchers decided to start a company around it. “The only way to curate thousands of tabular data sources that are constantly changing is using an artful combination of machine learning and human expertise,” says Palmer, who is now CEO. In practice, that means that Tamr’s system automatically identifies sources of data across a company that could be useful together and then ta...

  Insitro Daphne Koller of Insitro Headquarters:  South San Francisco   Founders : Daphne Koller (CEO) Funding:  $100 million  Valuation:  $135 million, via Pitchbook Insitro aims to improve the drug discovery process. Founded by machine-learning veteran Daphne Koller, it creates  in vitro  models of human disease in its automated laboratory and then applies machine-learning models to predict possible effective therapies. It recently announced a partnership with drug maker Gilead Sciences, worth up to $1 billion, to help it find a treatment for a form of liver disease called nonalcoholic steatohepatis, or NASH.