These images provide clues as to how ChatGPT will look if its creators make a physical version of their hugely popular artificial intelligence. The maker of ChatGPT, OpenAI, has invested in 1X, a company that makes humanoid robots designed to do human jobs after the success of the online chatbot. The robot, named EVE, has manipulators which can pick up objects and pack and unpack boxes - and is designed to work alongside human beings. OpenAI's Startup Fund led an investment round that raised $23.5 million for the 1X robot, which is set to hit the market this summer. The investment fuels OpenAI's rivalry with Elon Musk's Tesla bot, which has yet to begin production.

OpenAI is launching a $100 million startup fund, which it calls the OpenAI Startup Fund, though which it and its partners will invest in early-stage AI companies tackling major problems (and productivity). Among those partners and investors in the fund is Microsoft, at whose Build conference OpenAI founder Sam Altman announced the news. In a prerecorded video, Altman explained that "this is not a typical corporate venture fund. We plan to make big early bets on a relatively small number of companies, probably not more than 10." It's not clear exactly how the $100M will be divided or disbursed, or on what timeline, or whether this is part of a longer program. But it seems to be a limited fund, not just the 2021 round. Altman did say that they will be looking for companies that are taking on serious issues, like healthcare, climate change, and education, where AI-powered applications or approaches could "benefit all of humanity," in keeping with OpenAI's mission statement.

By Padmaja Ruparel 2019 saw the Indian entrepreneurial ecosystem make a paradigm shift. The country's startup landscape saw the emergence of seven new unicorns and value creation of $90 billion. Little wonder, then, that India is globally ranked third in its number of startups, behind only the US and China. The first half of 2019 saw $3.9 billion invested across 292 domestic investment deals, marking an increase of more than 44% over the same period in 2018. Emerging startups also benefited from the windfall.

A Queensland startup has celebrated a new deal with a major European customer after it perfected new deep learning technology that recognises images beyond simple shape and texture matching. TrademarkVision's deal with the European Union Intellectual Property Office this month comes after a successful beta test that saw around 1,000 trademark image searches conducted each day. The EUIPO becomes the first governmental agency to take up the technology, although the terms of the contract were not disclosed. In the past year, the company has been working on deep learning technology to take its software to the next level of intelligence, and the move has borne fruit in a spectacular way with the EU deal. "We've focused on machine learning techniques so the system can recognise objects in trademarks and logos much like humans do. Despite the wide variety of ways humans pictorially depict objects in logos, deep learning has helped to solve this semantic challenge in a quick and robust way," said TrademarkVision founder and chief executive Sandra Mau.

Chinese tech giant Lenovo is investing 500 million in startups after it announced a new fund. Unlike other corporates, Lenovo has a history of making deft investments. Its first fund, created in 2010 and 100 million in size, includes Israeli facial recognition startup Face, publicly listed Chinese firm iDreamsky and biometrics specialist Nok Nok Labs from the U.S. among its 40-plus company portfolio. With its second fund, Lenovo said it is looking to back companies with synergies to its businesses and, in particular, those in the cloud computing, big data, artificial intelligence, robots and other Internet services spaces. Beyond backing upcoming companies, Lenovo has also launched an incubator program for its own businesses.