Elon Musk's artificial intelligence startup, xAI, is seeking to raise $1bn (£0.8bn) as the world's richest man tries to keep pace with rivals including OpenAI, Microsoft and Google in the race to dominate the field. The company has already raised $135m (£107m) from investors and is seeking a total of $1bn in equity financing, according to a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. The race to develop generative AI – products that generate convincing text, image and audio from simple prompts – has intensified as Silicon Valley's biggest companies battle for supremacy after the release of OpenAI's ChatGPT in November last year. After the sensational impact of that chatbot, Microsoft announced a deepening of its partnership with OpenAI in January backed by a $10bn investment. Musk, the chief executive of Tesla and SpaceX and the owner of the X platform formerly known as Twitter, was one of OpenAI's co-founders in 2015 but left three years later. In July, Musk launched xAI and last month the company released its first AI model, a chatbot with a "rebellious streak" called Grok.

Popular gay dating app Grindr has agreed to go public through a blank-cheque firm whose founder was part of a consortium that bought the company in 2020, according to a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday. The deal with Tiga Acquisition Corporation will raise $384m including $284m of the special-purpose acquisition company's (SPAC) cash in trust plus up to $100m in a forward purchase agreement, valuing the company at $2.1bn including debt, according to the filing. The dating app was valued at $620m when it was sold in 2020 by its Chinese owner. Tiga Acquisition Corp went public in November 2020 to raise $240m, a few months after the Grindr sale. The SPAC would have to liquidate later this month if it failed to reach a deal with a potential merger target, after several extensions of the liquidation deadline.

For years, beer drinkers have had to pretend to enjoy dodgy-tasting beer served up by hipster breweries and enthusiastic home-brewers. Now researchers in Japan say two different facial expressions can truly reveal whether or not we enjoyed a beer immediately after trying it. In experiments, the scientists used facial recognition technology to scan people's facial expressions to reveal their true beer preferences. 'Lip suck', where the lips are drawn inwards as if we're saying'mmmmm', indicate that we enjoy a beverage, the experts claim. Conversely, 'lip press', where the lips are pressed down on top of each other, reveals that we actually thought a beer tasted horrible.

Law360 (June 7, 2021, 7:27 PM EDT) -- Artificial intelligence-focused startup WalkMe Ltd. launched plans on Monday for an initial public offering estimated to raise $282 million, one of four companies to bolster June's growing IPO pipeline with offerings that could raise $659 million combined, guided by nine law firms total. WalkMe, which also has offices in San Francisco, is advised by Latham & Watkins LLP on U.S. legal matters and by Meitar on Israeli legal matters. Stay ahead of the curve You have to know what's happening with clients, competitors, practice areas, and industries. Law360 (June 7, 2021, 7:27 PM EDT) -- Artificial intelligence-focused startup WalkMe Ltd. launched plans on Monday for an initial public offering estimated to raise $282 million, one of four companies to bolster June's growing IPO pipeline with offerings that could raise $659 million combined, guided by nine law firms total. WalkMe, which also has offices in San Francisco, is advised by Latham & Watkins LLP on U.S. legal matters and by Meitar on Israeli legal matters.

While Europe still faces a wide venture capital gap compared to Silicon Valley, the continent is nevertheless making big strides in positioning itself as an attractive hub for scientifically based startups. This is one of the key takeaways of "State of European Tech Report 2019," released today at the Slush technology conference in Helsinki, Finland. The report is produced by venture capital firm Atomico, along with Slush and London-based tech law firm Orrick. These "deep tech" industries span such cutting-edge technologies as quantum computing, computer vision, robotics, nanotech, and blockchain. Across these categories, European startups are on track to raise $8.4 billion in 2019, up from $6.7 billion last year and $3 billion in 2015.

AI is in full gold rush mode. Every day we hear headlines of AI companies raising vast sums of capital to give them the resources to prospect the veins of AI gold. The money is flowing to these new frontiers. In the US venture capital funding for AI grew 72% year over year to a whopping $9.3B in 2018. Dataminr, a New York based AI and machine learning company that makes sense of news and information in real time, raised US$392 million in 2018, for example.

Right now you can get the Google Assistant to start listening to you with a button push, or by saying "hey Google", or by squeezing the sides of your phone – but the Pixel 4 series is being tipped to introduce a new way of activating the app. According to 9to5Google, a new'raise to talk' option is in development, where you only need to lift up your phone and start talking to use Google Assistant. The voice interaction will need to happen right after you lift the phone, apparently, and the necessary voice match processing is carried out on the device itself – so other people won't be able to get at the feature just by picking your phone up. However, it's not certain that'raise to talk' for Google Assistant will be ready in time for the Pixel 4 launch on October 15 – it might be that the functionality gets pushed out as an update at a later date. We know that an improved Google Assistant is on the way, because Google showed off some of its features – including a more intuitive way of continuing a conversation with the app – at the Google IO event back in May.

AI is in full gold rush mode. Every day we hear headlines of AI companies raising vast sums of capital to give them the resources to prospect the veins of AI gold. The money is flowing to these new frontiers. In the US venture capital funding for AI grew 72% year over year to a whopping $9.3B in 2018. Dataminr, a New York based AI and machine learning company that makes sense of news and information in real time, raised US$392 million in 2018, for example.

Chinese artificial intelligence provider Megvii, commonly known as Face, is targeting to raise $500 million in a new funding round that pegs the current valuation of the firm at $3.5 billion, people with knowledge of the matter said. Bank of China Group Investment Ltd, the state bank's private equity (PE) arm, is looking to lead the fundraising with $200 million, two of the people told Reuters, declining to be named as the information is confidential. Terms of the fundraising have not been finalised, the people added. Beijing-based Megvii declined to comment. Bank of China's PE arm did not respond to a request for comment.

A employee uses his mobile phone as he walks past the company logo of Baidu at its headquarters in Beijing, August 5, 2010. The project is named Apollo after the lunar landing program, the Chinese search giant said, adding it would work with partners who provide vehicles, sensors and other components for the new technology. As part of its push into artificial intelligence (AI), the company in January named former Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) executive Qi Lu as chief operating officer. Two months after the appointment, Baidu's chief scientist Andrew Ng, who led AI and augmented reality (AR) projects, said he would step down. The company also launched a $200 million fund in October to focus on AI, AR and deep learning, followed by a $3 billion fund announced in September to target mid- and late- stage start-ups.