Avidbots Corp., which makes commercial floor-scrubbing robots, said it has raised US$70-million in new equity, marking one of the biggest financing rounds for a Canadian startup in recent months as the tech sector grapples with a prolonged downturn. Jeneration Capital, which has offices in Hong Kong and Beijing, led the round, which Avidbots said Tuesday brought its total venture financing to US$107-million to date. Numerous existing investors including BDC Capital, Golden Ventures and Kensington Capital Partners returned for the financing round, as did new investors such as BMO Capital Partners. Founded in 2014, Avidbots has focused its robotics efforts on a suite of floor-cleaning robots called Neo. The Kitchener, Ont.-based company says more than 1,000 have been sold worldwide in more than a dozen countries for clients in sectors such as warehousing, health care and manufacturing.

Robotic microsurgery company Medical Microinstruments announced today that it raised $75 million in a Series B financing round. Pisa, Italy–based Medical Microinstruments plans to use proceeds from the financing round, along with its planned U.S. presence, to move into its next stage of growth through expanded indications and ongoing commercialization efforts for its Symani microsurgery system. The company designed Symani to address the challenges of microsurgery with the NanoWrist instruments for accessing and suturing small, delicate anatomy, such as veins, arteries, nerves and lymphatic vessels as small as 0.3mm in diameter. It provides motion scaling and tremor reduction to allow precise micro-movements. Symani received CE mark in 2019, and the company intends to accelerate commercialization in the U.S. and Asia-Pacific, as well as advance clinical research through an FDA investigational device exemption (IDE) pivotal study.

In the past five years, interest in applying artificial intelligence (AI) approaches in drug research and development (R&D) has surged. Driven by the expectation of accelerated timelines, reduced costs and the potential to reveal hidden insights from vast datasets, more than 150 companies with a focus on AI have raised funding in this period, based on an analysis of the field by Back Bay Life Science Advisors (Figure 1a). And the number of financings and average amount raised soared in 2021. At the forefront of this field are companies harnessing AI approaches such as machine learning (ML) in small-molecule drug discovery, which account for the majority of financings backed by venture capital (VC) in recent years (Figure 1b), as well as some initial public offerings (IPOs) for pioneers in the area (Table 1). Such companies have also attracted large pharma companies to establish multiple high-value partnerships (Table 2), and the first AI-based small-molecule drug candidates are now in clinical trials (Nat.

Automata, a company focused on life sciences automation, raised $50 million in Series B funding. The company plans to use the financing to further develop its lab automation platform, Automata Labs, for use in and outside of the UK. Automata Labs was created to make scaling up easy for diagnostics labs, drug discovery labs and more. The company claims its system can be implemented within weeks and can automate each stage of workflow. It also offers a flexible robot arm called Eva.

We are excited to have co-led the € 23 million Series A financing round of Heidelberg-based Aleph Alpha together with our friends at Lakestar, UVC and existing investors LEA Partners, 468 Capital and Cavalry Ventures. The exceptional team around AI-serial-entrepreneur Jonas Andrulis and co-founder Samuel Weinbach research, develop and operationalise a new generation of huge and powerful AI like GPT-3, DALL-E or MuZero to maintain European sovereignty for Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). Andrew Ng, one of the leading AI experts stated in 2017: "AI is the new electricity" -- but is it really? Today, narrow AI -- models that are trained to perform one very specific task like chess or solving equations on or above human level -- have automated the development of Covid-19 vaccines, autonomous driving, the creation of music, perfumes, and a lot more. Yes, AI has led to mind boggling results but to fully gauge its potential, I'd like to put things into context: If humanity would have existed an equivalent of 1 day (to represent 300k years) and electricity for 1 minute (to represent 200 years), then narrow AI would be around for about 5 seconds (representing less than two decades).

These are nascent efforts but one forecast suggests adoption is about to pick up. AI will be involved in 75% of venture capital investment decisions by 2025, up from less than 5% today, according to a recent Gartner Inc. forecast. The Morning Download delivers daily insights and news on business technology from the CIO Journal team. AI's ability to recognize patterns in data and predict likely outcomes has raised hopes that it can play a bigger role in decision-making in fields such as finance and healthcare. Now, similar bets are being placed in venture capital.

Artificial intelligence has become a game-changing technology for 21st-century businesses. It has made complex jobs easier and automated, minimizing human effort. While AI is already making its influence in almost every industry, there is yet more to come in the future. This technology has not only changed the way companies perform, but also it is luring investors' eyes. Many startups in this rapidly evolving field are successfully attracting big investments and delivering innovative AI solutions and services.

Computer vision is an artificially intelligent technology that is rapidly growing in popularity. As this tech deals with how computers can reap high-level understanding from digital images or videos, it is becoming a part of people's everyday life. Besides having a significant impact on business transformation and consumers' lives, computer vision is starting to disrupt the global industry. The explosion in visual data, enhanced neural networks, and low-cost chips are some of the growth factors of computer vision. As a fast-evolving technology space, computer vision has attracted a lot of exposure and a great amount of investment.

AI-based electrocardiogram (ECG) technology developer AliveCor announced today that it has closed a $65 million Series E financing round. Mountain View, Calif.-based AliveCor plans to use proceeds from the financing round to accelerate the growth of its remote cardiology platform, both domestically and globally, according to a news release. AliveCor is augmenting its artificial intelligence-powered ECG with telehealth services and detection and condition management services. Omron, Khosla Ventures, WP Global Partners, Qualcomm Ventures and Bold Capital Partners, all existing investors, led the financing. AliveCor noted that its enhanced partnership with Omron in particular will position the company to include hypertension management within its service portfolio.

Healthcare workforce artificial intelligence startup Olive closed $106 million in a financing round that included participation from St. Louis-based Ascension's healthcare venture fund, according to a Sept. 17 news release. The latest financing round brings Olive's total fundraising total to more than $220 million to date. The company's AI workforce technology, which has been adopted by more than 600 hospitals, helps automate tasks in various departments such as IT, supply chain, revenue cycle and clinical administration. This year, Olive has reported a surge in demand for its AlphaSites, on-site command centers that deploy and manage AI workers to measure value for health systems. The company's team has grown to more than 360 employees this year, with 67 new workers joining in August.