AI News

AI-powered language learning app Speak is experiencing remarkable growth. Since its launch in South Korea in 2019, Speak has amassed over 10 million users, according to CEO and co-founder Connor Zwick. The app's user base has doubled annually for the past five years, and it now serves customers in more than 40 countries.

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In recent years, the pace of innovation in materials development has significantly increased, and a new French startup, Altrove, aims to contribute to this transformative journey. This deep tech startup has successfully secured €3.7 million (approximately $4 million) in funding.

SUSE, the esteemed open source company based in Luxembourg, has established a solid reputation in European IT circles but has struggled to gain traction in the U.S. market, where rivals like Red Hat and Canonical dominate. However, similar to other players in the cloud sector anticipating a transformation through AI, SUSE hopes that its AI initiatives will create new opportunities in the competitive U.S. landscape. On Tuesday, the company will unveil its AI strategy and introduce SUSE AI solutions, a versatile generative AI platform that is independent of any specific vendor or large language model (LLM).

Samsung is actively advancing its AI initiatives for consumer devices. Earlier this year, the electronics powerhouse announced its plans to incorporate Galaxy AI and Google’s Gemini model into its lineup. This will include the anticipated flagship smartphone, Galaxy 24, alongside the latest foldable innovations—the Galaxy Z Fold 6 and Galaxy Z Flip 6—each showcasing Galaxy AI and Google Gemini prominently.

This week in AI, generative AI is infiltrating academic publishing, raising concerns about disinformation in the field.

By now, it’s clear that quality data is essential for the effective operation of large language models (LLMs). However, preparing this data has been a significant challenge for many companies, presenting a perfect opportunity for innovative entrepreneurs. Enter Illumex—a two-year-old Israeli startup founded by Inna Tokarev-Sela, the former VP of AI at Sisense. This startup utilizes generative AI to streamline data preparation for LLMs and has just announced a successful $13 million funding round.

With the rise of generative AI, applications of this technology are revolutionizing various industries, particularly in reshaping software development practices. A notable player in this space is Autify, a startup based in San Francisco and Tokyo. The company has created an autonomous AI agent dedicated to software quality assurance, designed to help software engineers expedite coding tasks, streamline workflows, and enhance productivity. Essentially, it's like having an AI QA engineer at your disposal.

European regulations are transforming ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) reporting from optional to essential, creating exciting opportunities for innovative startups like Apiday. Based in Paris, Apiday offers a platform tailored to private equity funds and blue-chip companies that need to monitor and enhance their sustainability practices.

For frontier AI models, the momentum is undeniable. On Wednesday, Mistral unveiled its latest flagship model, Large 2, claiming it rivals the most advanced models from OpenAI and Meta in key areas like code generation, mathematics, and reasoning.

Speak, an innovative English language learning platform supported by OpenAI’s Startup Fund, has successfully secured $16 million in a Series B-2 funding round led by angel investor Lachy Groom. Notable contributions also came from Dropbox co-founders Drew Houston and Arash Ferdowsi, bringing the startup’s total funding to $63 million. CEO Connor Zwick indicated that this investment will facilitate Speak's expansion into new markets, including a launch in the U.S. by the end of the year. Presently, Speak operates in approximately 20 countries, such as Japan, Taiwan, Germany, France, Brazil, and Mexico.

OpenAI's new AI model, Sora, produces high-resolution videos and is currently being tested by select visual artists. Writer/director Paul Trillo showcased Sora's capabilities in the first official music video for Washed Out. Despite excitement over AI's potential in media, concerns linger about training data use without consent.

Microsoft has launched a public preview of Copilot for Finance, an AI assistant designed for finance professionals to enhance efficiency by automating data tasks within Excel. It focuses on audits, collections, and variance analysis, aiming to streamline workflows. The tool incorporates privacy measures and will be available more broadly later this year.