Arthur Mensch is one of a new generation of entrepreneurs hoping to solve a longstanding problem with the European economy: its failure to produce a Silicon Valley-style tech behemoth. The 31-year-old Frenchman is chief executive of Mistral, a startup that achieved a €240m (£206m) valuation in its first round of financing – four weeks after it was founded. And he believes artificial intelligence (AI) will be the great leveller, putting Europe on a par with its previously uncatchable competitors across the Atlantic. Mistral develops large language models – the technology that underpins AI tools such as ChatGPT – and Mensch believes this could hand the initiative to a continent producing a new wave of fast-moving startups. "Given the new tools we have to hand, like large language models, everything has to be rebuilt around them. When something has to be rebuilt, it gives new players an advantage because they can go fast," he says.

The flow of venture capital dollars into AI and machine learning companies in San Francisco hit new highs this year, with start-ups raising $18.5 billion in the first quarter -- about 82 percent of U.S. investments in the segment, according to data from PitchBook. That is $6 billion more than all the AI companies in San Francisco raised in 2022. Although the quarterly amount invested has moderated, investor interest in AI is expected to be strong in 2024 as companies continue to recognize AI's value, PitchBook said.

California would become the first state to require venture capital firms to disclose the race and gender of the founders of the companies they fund, under a bill currently awaiting governor Gavin Newsom's signature. The business community strongly opposes the legislation, characterizing it as an example of bureaucratic overreach. But civil rights groups and female entrepreneurs say it could go a long way toward equalizing opportunity in Silicon Valley, where startup capital overwhelmingly flows to white men. According to the business data firm PitchBook, companies founded by all-female teams accounted for just 2% of venture capital funding last year. Those led by Black women and Latinas received even less, 0.85%, according to a report from Project Diane, a research effort focused on female founders.

At PitchBook, we are always looking forward. We continue to innovate, evolve and invest in ourselves to bring out the best in everyone. We're deeply collaborative and thrive on the excitement, energy and fun that reverberates throughout the company. Our extensive mentorship, education and training programs help us create a culture of curiosity that pushes us to always find new solutions and better ways of doing things. The combination of a rapidly evolving industry and our high ambitions means there's going to be some ambiguity along the way, but we excel when we challenge ourselves. We're willing to take risks, fail fast and do it all over again in the pursuit of excellence.

Venture capitalists are rushing to invest in artificial intelligence start-ups as growing hype around "generative AI" fills the void left by failing cryptocurrency and blockchain ventures. The recent leap in developments of sophisticated computer programs that can write scripts and create art in seconds has driven a surge of investor interest, creating a rare bright spot in a start-up landscape dominated by tumbling valuations and job cuts. OpenAI, a San Francisco-based company in which Microsoft is the largest funder, released the newest form of its GPT-3.5 software to the public last week, which can converse with users through text: answer follow-up questions, admit mistakes and reject inappropriate requests. In five days, ChatGPT surpassed 1mn users and was praised by billionaire Elon Musk, a co-founder of OpenAI who left the board in 2018, who tweeted: "ChatGPT is scary good. We are not far from dangerously strong AI."

DETROIT (Reuters) - The road map to fully self-driving vehicles is being rewritten once again, this time by Ford Motor Co and Volkswagen AG. When the two automakers joined forces in July 2019 to share control of self-driving startup Argo AI, it shook up the landscape among other key players. Wednesday's announcement that Pittsburgh-based Argo is being shuttered and some of its employees moving to Ford and VW underscores the growing realization that automated vehicles may be even further away from mass deployment than industry executives predicted back in 2019. "It's become very clear that profitable, fully autonomous vehicles at scale are still a long way off," Ford CFO John Lawler said on Wednesday. As Ford, General Motors Co and other companies began to realize they would need to step up investment over a longer period of time, "it was never clear what the financial returns were going to be" on automated vehicles, Evangelos Simoudis, an investor, author and corporate adviser, told Reuters on Wednesday.

Venture capital (VC) funding slid more deeply in AI & ML than in software overall in Q2, "falling 27.8% quarter-over-quarter (QoQ) compared to 21.6% for IT more generally." Both deal value and deal count "fell to their lowest levels since Q4 2020, also lagging the rest of IT," the report from Pitchbook revealed. Of the 70 product categories the firm tracks, "only 21 are on pace to grow in VC funding in 2022, driven by leading vertical applications including sales & marketing, information security, and drug discovery." The update from Pitchbook also mentioned that horizontal platform investment "is lagging, as outsized revenue projections face market realities, with AI-as-a service (AIaaS) investment on pace to decrease 87.7% in 2022." Numerous AI platform companies "have struggled to reach revenue forecasts in the current financial environment, creating a greater emphasis on vertical applications that can rapidly deliver value."

A software developer with PolyAI who was testing the system, asked about booking a table for himself and a Serbian friend. "Yes, we allow children at the restaurant," the voice bot replied, according to PolyAI founder Nikola Mrksic. Seemingly out of nowhere, the bot was trying make an obnoxious joke about people from Serbia. When it was asked about bringing a Polish friend, it replied, "Yes, but you can't bring your own booze." Mrksic, who is Serbian, admits that the system appeared to think people from Serbia were immature.

Medical imaging AI, which can help diagnose health problems doctors don't alway see, is only getting more sophisticated--and more lucrative. Just last month, Tel-Aviv-based Aidoc raised $65 million for it's AI-powered medical imaging platform and other local companies are attracting investors at a rapid clip. The software can find, and in some cases, diagnose polyps, tumors or anomalies that may otherwise go undetected by the human eye – a feat that has the potential to save lives. Beyond its most promising attributes, AI-driven technology could also dramatically decrease wait times at hospitals and doctors' offices by automating some of the most tedious work, allowing doctors to see and treat more patients. But critics of the unregulated technology say results can be inconsistent.

As a machine learning researcher in the biology field, I have been keeping an eye on the recently emerging field of AI in drug discovery. Living in Toronto myself, where many "star" companies in this field were founded (Atomwise, BenchSci, Cyclica, Deep Genomics, ProteinQure… just to name a few!), I talked to many people in this field, and attended a few meetup events about this topic. What I learned is that this field is growing at such a rapid speed, and it is becoming increasing hard to keep track of all companies in this field and get a comprehensive view of them. Therefore, I decide to use my data science skills to track and analyze the companies in this field, and build an interactive dashboard (https://ai-drug-dash.herokuapp.com) to visualize some key insights from my analysis. The Chief Strategy Officer of BenchSci (one of the "star" AI-drug startups in Toronto), Simon Smith, is an excellent observer and communicator in the AI-drug discovery field.