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Delphia closes $60 million USD to improve AI-driven investment platform with user-owned data (BETAKIT)
Delphia’s previous funding rounds include a $4 million pre-seed round in 2018 and $15.3 million in seed funding in 2019. Spun out of public opinion research company Vox Pop Labs in 2018, Delphia provides an AI-driven investment platform that it touts as a way to forecast the growth and profitability of publicly-traded companies, up to seven quarters into the future.
Meta Shakes Up AI Unit Amid Drive for Growth (THE WALL STREET JOURNAL)
Facebook is shifting its artificial-intelligence development out of central research labs and into its product groups, a move aimed at accelerating the technology’s adoption as it pushes for faster growth. The move breaks with recent practice at many companies, including Facebook, which concentrated AI research efforts in centralized hubs.
Shield AI raises $165M at a $2.3B valuation to fuel development of its military autonomous flying systems (TECHCRUNCH)
The funding is coming in at a $2.3 billion valuation, Shield AI said. The company has been on a strong pace on that front: It follows on from a $210 million-$300 million Series D about 10 months ago that valued the company at $1.25 billion. (It never confirmed the final amount, which was also a mix of equity and debt.)
Maropost acquires Swedish AI startup Findify for over $4.45 million USD (BETAKIT)
Maropost offers a commerce and marketing platform that supports direct-to-consumer companies with audience engagement, customer acquisition, and revenue growth. The company serves customers across multiple sectors, such as ecommerce, retail, media, as well as travel and hospitality.
It wasn’t that long ago that the pandemic effect helped drive a record-breaking IPO boom among Canadian technology companies. Fast forward a year, however, and the landscape has completely changed with private market growth capital once again the financing pathway of choice for tech firms.
A.I. gurus are leaving Big Tech to work on buzzy new start-ups (CNBC)
Four of the best-funded new AI start-ups — Inflection, Cohere, Adept and Anthropic — have recently poached dozens of AI scientists with backgrounds in Big Tech. Their hiring efforts are being fueled by venture capital firms and billionaires keen to cash in on any success they have. Collectively, these firms have raised over $1 billion and they’re using these vast war chests to poach talented individuals who command high salaries from their previous employers.
Orna raises over $1 million in seed funding to bolster AI-powered cybersecurity platform (BETAKIT)
The company started out as a project within Wembley Partners, a global cybersecurity services firm. The founding team, which has experience in cyber incident response and digital forensics, discovered that Orna had the potential as a standalone solution. Using artificial intelligence (AI), Orna’s platform is able to provide SMBs with response, reporting, compliance, and prevention strategies.
Symbotic closes SPAC deal and debuts on NASDAQ (THE ROBOT REPORT)
“Today marks a significant milestone for Symbotic and its employees, and we are excited to accelerate our growth with a truly disruptive technology platform used by some of the world’s largest companies,” Michael J. Loparco, CEO of Symbotic, said. “Symbotic’s long-term partnership with SoftBank and other established investors will allow us to more rapidly scale our operations, introduce new technology innovations, and expand into new markets.”
Penny AI raises $33.9 million CAD Series B to expand direct sales solution (BETAKIT)
Maria Osipova, chief marketing officer at Penny, told BetaKit that this investment brings Penny’s total funding to date to $40.8 million CAD ($32.5 million USD). Penny previously raised a $650,000 seed round in 2018, and a $5 million Series A in 2020. Osipova declined to disclose the amount of secondary capital included in the $27 million financing.
'AI’ Shopping Startup Exaggerated Tech Capabilities to Potential Investors (THE INFORMATION)
While the company said it was using artificial intelligence to populate customer information during the checkout process, it had actually hired workers in the Philippines to manually enter the data on retailers’ sites for a significant portion of the transactions Nate facilitated in 2021, according to two people with direct knowledge of the company’s practices.
Able Innovations announces $7.5 million to take the pain out of patient transfer (BETAKIT)
In an interview with BetaKit, Puri described the typical patient transfer process as “pretty crude,” adding that it can cause pain to patients and result in hospital staff experiencing injuries. Amid an already short-staffed healthcare system during COVID-19, the issues associated with this routine task have become magnified.
