AI Startup Roundup: Apple Eyes AI Startup to Fuel Vision Pro Plans

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Apple M&A to enhance Vision Pro

Apple is reportedly looking to acquire German startup Brighter AI to improve privacy features on its new Apple Vision Pro headset.

9to5Mac reports that Apple is considering acquiring the company and using its technology to prevent the mixed reality headset from capturing identifiable information in photos and videos taken in public.

Brighter’s AI tech anonymizes data without blurring, altering images to hide the subject while still making the object look natural.

Brighter AI's Deep Natural Anonymization replaces license plates (left) with replicas (right) Credit: Brighter AI

The Vision Pro headset launched late last week, with pre-orders for the device surpassing 200,000 units.

The new Apple headset has received positive reviews from tech critics, though cost has proven a sticking point. The base Vision Pro costs $3,500, a high price tag compared to the market leader, the Quest Pro from Meta, which costs $999.

Databricks acquires AI startup Einblick

Databricks has acquired Einblick, a German startup that designed techniques for translating natural language questions into code and models needed to generate insights.

The Nvidia-backed firm did not disclose details of the purchase. Einblick will be integrated with Databricks’ underlying data catalog, including its Data Intelligence Platform.

Databricks CEO Ali Ghodsi said the move will enable organizations to democratize data intelligence and “create the next generation of data and AI applications with quality, speed and agility.”

Funding news

Kore.ai

Florida-based Kore.ai is a provider of an enterprise-grade, no-code platform to help enterprises build conversational virtual assistants, generative AI applications and other solutions. Customers include AT&T, Cigna, Coca-Cola, Airbus and Roche.

Latest funding: $150 million

Lead investor: FTV Capital

Other investors: Nvidia, Vistara Growth, Sweetwater PE, NextEquity, Nicola and Beedie

Funding plans: Accelerate market expansion and enhance ongoing AI innovation to bring value to businesses in a responsible way.

Rebellions

Korean chip startup Rebellions designs AI inference accelerators. The startup has previously designed chips for use in data centers and autonomous vehicles.

Rebellions is currently working with Samsung Electronics to develop a new chip, codenamed ‘Rebel,’ which will focus on powering generative AI workloads, particularly large language models.

Latest funding: $124 million, series B

Lead investor: KT

Other investors: KT Cloud, Shinhan Venture Investments, Pavilion Capital, Koreyla Capital, DGDV

Funding plans: Funds will be used to accelerate the mass production of the new Rebel chip, as well as hire staff.

Inari Agriculture

Based in Massachusetts, Inari uses AI to design and develop seeds that require fewer resources.

The agtech startup combines AI-powered predictive design with gene editing tools to create soybean, corn and wheat seeds that require less water and fertilizer.

Latest funding: $103 million, series F

Investors: Hanwha Impact, CPP Investments, Rivas Capital, NGS Super, State of Michigan Retirement System, Flagship Pioneering, RCM Private Markets fund

Codeium

Mountain View, California-based Codeium creates generative AI tools for software developers.

Codeium leverages proprietary AI models to improve developer productivity, integrating its solutions into enterprise customers’ codebases. Supporting over 70 languages, Codeium claims its tools are writing upwards of 40% of its customers’ new committed code.

Latest funding: $65 million, series B

Lead investors: Kleiner Perkins

Other investors: Greenoaks, General Catalyst

Funding plans: Codeium plans to integrate its AI with more developer tools as well as expanding its solutions to cover software designing and planning, and legacy code migration.

Reken

San Francisco-based Reken is building cybersecurity solutions to fight generative AI-powered threats such as deep fake social engineering.

Co-founder and CEO Shuman Ghosemajumder was Google’s former global head of product, trust and safety.

Latest funding: $10 million, seed round (oversubscribed)

Lead investors: Greycroft, FPV Ventures

Other investors: Firebolt Ventures, Fika Ventures, Omega Venture Partners, Homebrew, JAZZ Venture Partners

Funding plans: Reken will invest in its core R&D to build new products focusing on protecting against generative AI threats, like deepfakes.

P0

P0 is building AI-powered cybersecurity tools for uses such as preventing data breaches. The Delaware-based startup’s software testing tools utilize large language models to find vulnerabilities in products.

Latest funding:  $6.5 million, seed round

Lead investor: Lightspeed Venture Partners

Other investor: Alchemy Ventures

Funding plans: P0 will use the cash to develop its product and build its team, Bloomberg reports.

Coxwave

San Francisco-based Coxwave is creating analytics infrastructure tools. The startup is behind Align AI, a platform that allows developers to monitor and analyze conversational data generated from LLM-powered conversational products.

Latest funding: $3.5 million, seed round

Lead investor: KB Investment

Other investors: Danal, Seoul Techno Holding

Funding plans: The funds will go towards investing in building its core analytics infrastructure platform.