The connected fitness boom of pandemic-era lockdowns is long behind us (hopefully), but Growl, a new startup, is still looking to bolt a workout to the wall of your home. Think of Tonal, except instead of resistance training, it's a boxing-inspired heavy bag session. The wall-mounted Growl is, according to the company, powered by AI and Unreal Engine and appears to have overhead projectors, which beam the image of a life-sized coach onto the convex punching surface. Besides the projection, the bag has an interactive coaching system to help motivate users. It also supposedly supports side-by-side training, which works great for training partners.

To further strengthen our commitment to providing industry-leading coverage of data technology, VentureBeat is excited to welcome Andrew Brust and Tony Baer as regular contributors. Is there a better way to build a search tool that produces more highly relevant results than just using keyword-based techniques? That's one of the many questions that former Google staffers Amr Awadallah (CEO), Amin Ahmad (CTO) and Tallat Shafaat (chief architect) wanted to solve with their new startup, which has been in stealth under the name ZIR AI. Today, ZIR AI is emerging from stealth under the name Vectara, with the help of $20 million in seed funding, and availability of the company's neural search-as-a-service technology. The foundational premise of Vectara is that artificial intelligence (AI)-based large language models (LLMs) combined with natural language processing (NLP), data integration pipelines and vector techniques can create a neural network that is useful for multiple use cases, including search.

An Israeli biotechnology innovation lab set up last year and backed by some of the world's leading pharmaceutical companies like Pfizer and Merck has formed a new startup that will harness artificial intelligence (AI) to assess drug efficacy in pre-clinical trials and improve chances for success in later stages. The startup, OMEC.AI, is the first company established with funding and support from AION Labs, a Rehovot-based organization launched last October with a mission to create and invest in early-stage startups focused on AI and computational biology in drug discovery and development. AION Labs is a collaboration between pharmaceutical giants Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Merck, and Teva Pharmaceuticals, together with Amazon's AWS and the Israel Biotech Fund, and is headed by Mati Gill, a former senior executive at Teva, and Dr. Yair Benita, the former head of computational biology at Compugen, science operations at CytoReason, and principal scientist at MSD (Merck). AION Labs ran three bootcamps over the past year to field scientist founders and inventors focused on addressing key industry challenges identified by the global pharma companies such as designing antibodies for targeted therapeutics and analyzing data using AI to assess and predict the clinical readiness of drug candidates. The latter challenge produced OMEC.AI, founded this summer with $2 million (NIS 7 million) in seed funding by AI experts Ori Shachar and Amir Harel, both of whom previously led AI teams at Mobileye, Intel's Jerusalem-based autonomous driving subsidiary.

One of the single hottest trends in technology startups is Artificial Intelligence (AI). Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing, and various other nuances are being constantly applied to problems up and down the alleyways of all industries from Manufacturing, to Retail, to Education, to Drug Discovery. All the methodology building blocks you have been learning through the 1Mby1M entrepreneurship fundamentals courses apply. You can, for instance, bootstrap an AI startup with Services, then you can raise money (or not). You can build a Unicorn (or not). In addition, you will need to learn domain specific lessons from entrepreneur case studies and thought leader interviews. You will also need to listen to investor perspectives on AI ventures and new trends they have identified. Artificial Intelligence still has a lot of white space. Therefore, entrepreneurs looking for ideas to develop as new startups would do well to study the trend and the opportunities thereof. In the

The 1Mby1M Methodology is based on case studies. In this course, Sramana Mitra shares the tribal knowledge of tech entrepreneurs by giving students the rare seat at the table with the entrepreneurs, investors and thought leaders who provide the most instructive perspectives on how to build a thriving business. Through these conversations, students gain access to case studies exploring the alleys of entrepreneurship. Sramana's synthesis of key learnings and incisive analysis add great depth to each discussion. One of the single hottest trends in technology startups is Artificial Intelligence (AI).

Powered by the MIT Innovation Initiative (MITii) and launched in October 2019, the MIT Proto Ventures program takes an entirely new approach to venture formation from within MIT. It oversees the accelerated emergence of new ventures along a full life cycle: from discovery of ideas and resources at MIT to exploration of the problem-solution space to a methodical de-risking process to helping build a "proto venture" with internal and external support that demonstrates the viability of the venture. Under the leadership of MITii Venture Builder Luis Ruben Soenksen PhD '19, the program announced last week that two new MIT startups will launch as part of Proto Ventures. "The Proto Ventures program has nurtured everything I know is relevant in order to develop high-impact scientific ventures in today's world," says Soenksen. "This time has been an extraordinary complement to my PhD studies and research activities at MIT and is leading me to pursue my passion around artificial intelligence and health care in the form of multiple startups. What more could I've hoped for?"

Apple has acquired Xnor.ai, a Seattle startup specializing in low-power, edge-based artificial intelligence tools, sources with knowledge of the deal told GeekWire. Speaking on condition of anonymity, sources said Apple paid an amount similar to what was paid for Turi, in the range of $200 million. Xnor.ai didn't immediately respond to our inquiries, while Apple emailed us its standard response on questions about acquisitions: "Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time and we generally do not discuss our purpose or plans." When we visited Xnor.ai's office in Seattle's Fremont neighborhood this morning, a move was clearly in progress -- presumably to Apple's Seattle offices. The arrangement suggests that Xnor's AI-enabled image recognition tools could well become standard features in future iPhones and webcams.

Radiology artificial intelligence (AI) was again the hottest topic at the 2019 Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) annual meeting in December. AI was a primary theme in the larger booths in the north and south expo floors, as well as on the new third expo floor dedicated AI showcase. The separate AI show floor did not make many AI vendors happy. Many wanted the artificial intelligence showcase on the same level as the other expo halls to reduce the shuttling between the floors for meetings. RSNA organizers pointed out to one startup that due to the sheer number of AI exhibitors, they had to give the showcase its own space.

Like a kid burning holes in their toys using a magnifying glass, solar furnaces essentially do the same thing on a much grander scale. The larger an array of reflectors you can build, the bigger the sun-focusing lens you get. But a new startup is promising a better way to build solar furnaces using AI to reduce their footprint while boosting their power output. Even Donald Trump's solar tariffs and desire to prop up the coal industry can't stop renewable… In recent years the price of solar energy has dropped dramatically, and it's estimated that the cost of building plants like Nevada's Eagle Shadow Mountain Solar Farm, which officially begins generating power sometime in 2021, is actually cheaper than just operating existing coal or natural gas plants. Harnessing the immense energy of the sun is an obvious alternative to relying on fossil fuels to generate power, but in order to generate the temperatures needed to create molten salt, which is what solar plants like these use to create steam to turn electrical generators, temperatures of around 600 C are needed, which requires a vast array of reflectors (or heliostats), and a big chunk of land on which to install them.

Marissa Mayer vanished from the Silicon Valley landscape two years ago when she resigned from Yahoo Inc. shortly after it was sold to Verizon Communications Inc. for $4.48 billion. Her tumultuous 5-year reign at the eponymous tech media company, on the heels of a historic run at Alphabet Inc.'s GOOGL, -1.03% GOOG, -1.06% Google in the search division, made her one of the industry's most recognizable faces -- to her professional benefit and personal dismay. On Monday, at the Techonomy conference here, she resurfaced with a new startup and some pointed comments on the valley. Mayer was interviewed on stage for about 20 minutes by Techonomy founder and journalist David Kirkpatrick. Like Twitter Inc. TWTR, 0.82% Chief Executive Jack Dorsey, Mayer opposes automated ads from politicians, calling them "very dangerous."