Nothing beats the experience of powering down the highway in your car with the speakers blaring out your favourite tunes. But often the music doesn't match up to the moments of the drive – whether it's the chorus kicking in when you hit the accelerator or steady beats breaking up the monotony of the motorway. Now, a solution has come from an unlikely source – will.i.am, the entrepreneur and musician best known as the founder of the Black Eyed Peas. He's partnered with German car maker Mercedes Benz on futuristic in-car software called Sound Drive that'turns your car into a musical instrument'. When the driver accelerates, brakes or turns, the software reacts to create new sounds or remix existing tunes, making the driver'the conductor' and the car'the orchestra'.

UniServices has followed Mercedes Benz's investment into Soul Machines with its own commitment of US$2m to a US$15m funding round announced recently by the company. UniServices, which owns 15% of the company, made the investment through its $20m University of Auckland Inventors Fund. Soul Machines was spun out of the University of Auckland in July 2016 with a Series A investment round by some of the world's leading AI investors. The University of Auckland Inventors Fund was formed in 2016, with capital provided from UniServices' retained earnings from its commercialisation business. Designed to fill a gap in the market for very early-stage capital in deep-tech IP based businesses, and to foster academic and student entrepreneurship, the Fund is typically the first investor in University-derived start-ups. It syndicates with local and global investors, including Horizon Ventures, Brandon Capital and the IP Group, that collectively have over $1bn of capital.