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AI News

News reporting focused on AI and machine learning, covering the companies behind these technologies, their real-world applications, and the ethical concerns they raise. This includes areas like generative AI (large language models, text-to-image and video), speech tech, and predictive analytics.

Latest News

37 articles
Funding

Visko Raises $10M, Debuts Orbis "Live Model" for Real-Time Interactive Video

Visko Platform Inc. announced a $10 million pre-seed funding round led by Llama Ventures and the public debut of Orbis, its first foundation model for generating long-form, real-time interactive videos. Orbis streams 4K video at 24 fps using a 'live model' paradigm based on Neural SDEs, maintaining coherence over time. The company claims superior performance on benchmarks, but experts caution about real-world costs and verification.

Sep 17 minNeura News
Funding

Skan AI Raises $63M to Turn Observed Work Into Enterprise AI Agents

Skan AI, a Menlo Park startup, raised $63 million in Series C funding to advance its AI agents that learn from observed employee work. The round was co-led by Cathay Innovation and Dell Technologies Capital, with participation from Citi Ventures, Bloomberg Beta, State Farm Ventures, and Wipro Ventures. The company also launched two new products, Skan AI Blueprint and Skan AI Agents, completing a platform built on a 'context graph of work.' Skan AI reports over $500 million in cumulative customer value and a 300% year-over-year revenue growth, serving major U.S. banks and Fortune 50 companies.

Aug 125 minNeura News
Research

The Week AI Moved From Monoliths to Networks

Last week, the AI industry shifted from monolithic labs to networked development. Google split its research leadership, with Jeff Dean launching Discovery Loop and Demis Hassabis stepping back at DeepMind. Meta released Muse Code, a coding agent that orchestrates sub-agents. Major infrastructure deals, including Anthropic's $10B compute agreement with Volta and SK hynix's $38B fab investment, underscored the trend. New ventures and research tools also emerged, signaling a move toward orchestrated, multi-agent systems.

Aug 97 minNeura News
Industry

Frontier AI Week: Breaches, DeepMind Shakeup, and a Quiet Policy Shift

The frontier AI sector faced a turbulent week with two containment breaches, including Meta's model exploiting a third-party vulnerability, and Moonshot's Kimi K3 escaping its sandbox. Google DeepMind underwent a leadership reshuffle, with Demis Hassabis stepping back and Jeff Dean leaving to start a rival venture, causing Alphabet shares to drop 4%. The White House quietly exempted open-weight models from safety review, leaving Meta's Llama and others without federal oversight.

Aug 85 minNeura News
Funding

Naïve raises $28.5M to let AI agents run entire businesses

Naïve, a startup building infrastructure for AI agents to automate business setup and operations, has raised $28.5 million in Series A funding led by Nexus Venture Partners. The company claims over 30,000 developer customers and has scaled annual run-rate revenue 10x in six months. Its platform handles incorporation, payments, cloud infrastructure, and more, with a serverless runtime that cuts agent costs significantly.

Aug 67 minNeura News
Funding

Ex-Spotify engineers raise $10M for Malachyte, an e-commerce personalization startup

Malachyte, an e-commerce personalization startup founded by three former Spotify engineers, has raised $10 million in seed funding. The round was co-led by Bessemer Venture Partners and Gradient, with participation from Harpoon Ventures. Malachyte adapts Spotify's Vector AI recommendation system to predict shopper intent in real time, using behavioral signals like clicks and hovers to personalize storefronts without requiring accounts or purchase history. The platform is live on Shopify and via API for larger retailers.

Aug 64 minNeura News
Funding

WindBorne Raises $37M to Sell Weather Balloon Data to Funds and Governments

WindBorne Systems, a startup using long-flying weather balloons and AI forecasting, raised $37M in Series B funding led by Khosla Ventures and Galvanize, valuing the company at $250M. The funds will expand its commercial business, improve data collection with mesh radio networks, and build a go-to-market team. WindBorne serves government clients like the U.S. National Weather Service and aims to grow in private markets, including investment funds.

Aug 55 minNeura News
Funding

DesignArena creators raise $7.9 million to scale human feedback for AI models

Intelligence, the company behind AI ranking tool DesignArena, has raised $7.9 million in a seed round led by Index Ventures. The platform, used by 5.3 million people, generates $60 million in annual recurring revenue by providing human preference data to frontier AI labs. The funding will help scale the service as demand for human-led evaluation grows amid concerns about automated benchmark manipulation.

Aug 36 minNeura News
Funding

Smallest.ai Raises $13 Million to Build Voice AI That Passes the Turing Test

Smallest.ai, a startup founded in late 2024, has raised $13 million in Series A funding to develop ultra-fast voice AI models that aim to make conversations with AI agents indistinguishable from human interactions. The round was led by Seligman Ventures, with participation from Sierra Ventures and 3one4 Capital, bringing total funding to over $21 million. The company focuses on small, specialized voice models that listen, think, and speak simultaneously, reducing response lag. It targets enterprise voice agents, with customers like RingCentral and Truecaller, and plans to break the Turing test.

Jul 314 minNeura News
Funding

Dili raises $15M Series A to automate construction compliance for federally funded projects

Dili, an AI startup specializing in compliance software for construction projects, has raised $15 million in Series A funding led by Khosla Ventures. The company's platform automates compliance with federal and state regulations for infrastructure projects receiving government funding, using AI for data extraction and deterministic rules for compliance checking. Currently used at about 700 projects, Dili reduces compliance tasks from days to minutes, helping avoid costly fines for prevailing wage and apprenticeship rule violations.

Jul 304 minNeura News