OpenAI rebrands itself & Stanford researchers created an open rival to OpenAI’s o1 ‘reasoning’ model.

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STARTUPS RAISING MILLIONS

💰 Startup funding updates

Pickleheads, an Atlanta, GA-based provider of a platform for pickleball players to connect and organize games, raised $2.5M in Seed funding. The round was led by Overline, with participation from Ardent, Oregon Sports Angels, Profluence Capital, Service Provider Capital, Network Ventures and over 65 new angel investors.

Neofin, a Sao Paulo, Brazil-based provider of an AI-powered SaaS accounts receivable platform, raised $7M in Seed funding. The round was led by Quona and Upload Ventures. Other investors included 17-Sigma, 1616, Far Out Ventures, BFF, Norte, and Canaan, alongside angel investors Cesar Carvalho and Patrick Sigrist.

Ivo, a San Francisco, CA-based provider of an AI-powered contract review solution, raised $16M in Series A Funding. The round, which brought the total amount to $22.2M, was led by Costanoa Ventures, with participation from Fika Ventures, Uncork Capital, NFDG, Blackbird VC, GD1, and Phase One Ventures.

Miist Therapeutics, an Alameda CA-based physics-based developer of inhaled medicines, raised $7M in funding. Backers included Refactor Capital, 1517 Fund, Freeflow Ventures, Entrepreneur First, and California Innovation Fund, among others.

Fay, a San Francisco, CA-based digital nutritional therapy company, raised $50M in Series B funding, at a $500M valuation. The round was led by Goldman Sachs. Existing investors General Catalyst and Forerunner also participated. This latest investment brings Fay’s total funding to $75M.

GetWhys, a Boise, ID-based provider of an AI-powered customer insights platform, raised $2.75M in Seed funding. The round, which brought the total amount to $3.5M, was led by Next Frontier Capital, with participation from Tuesday Capital and Capital Eleven.

Semgrep, a San Francisco, CA-based provider of an application security platform, raised $100M in Series B funding. The round, which brought the total amount to $204M, was led by Menlo Ventures, with participation from existing investors including Felicis Ventures, Harpoon Ventures, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Redpoint Ventures, and Sequoia Capital.

Little Otter, a San Francisco, CA-based company which specializes in digital whole-family mental health care, raised $9.5M in funding. Backers included Pivotal Ventures, Torch Capital, Springbank, CRV, Next Legacy, G9, Gratitude Railroad, and Carrie Walton Penner’s Fiore Ventures.

Saeki, a Zurich, Switzerland-based manufacturing automation company, raised $6.7M in Funding. The round was led by Lightbird with participation from Founderful, 2100VC, Danobat, and business angels.

GenLogs, an Arlington, VA-based provider of a freight Intelligence platform raised $14.6M in Series A funding. The round was led by Venrock and HOF Capital, with participation from Steel Atlas, AutoTech Ventures, Venture53, TitletownTech, Plug and Play Ventures, and Heartland Ventures.

Lorikeet, a Sydney, Australia-based provider of an AI customer experience company, raised $9M in funding. The round was led by Blackbird and its existing investors Square Peg and Skip Capital.

Largo.ai, a Lausanne, Switzerland-based provider of AI-driven solutions for the film, TV and advertising industries, raised USD 7.5M in Funding. The round was led by TI Capital and QBIT Capital, with participation from Atreides Management, Sylvester Stallone, Thomas Tippl, and DAA Capital.

Beamable, a Boston, MA-based developer of decentralized infrastructure for gaming, raised $13.5M in Series A funding. The round was led by BITKRAFT Ventures with participation from Arca, Advancit Capital, 2Punks, P2 Ventures, Solana Foundation, Scytale Digital, defy.vc, GrandBanks Capital and Permit Ventures.

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🏦 Venture Capital updates

Overlap Holdings, a NYC-based venture capital firm, closed its first fund, Overlap Holdings Flagship Fund 1 (OHF1), at $33m. OHF1 will invest in early-stage (Seed through Series B) startups building technologies at the intersection of scientific innovation and hardware. The firm invests in frontier tech sectors such as Energy, Life Science, Materials Science, Space, Robotics, and Semiconductors.

Cherry Ventures, a Berlin, Germany, London, UK, and Stockholm, Sweden-based an early-stage venture capital firm that backs European founders, is launching Cherry V, an initiative that amounts to $500m split in two new funds. The funds are split between its flagship Early Stage fund, and an opportunity fund to double down on the most promising portfolio companies at Series B and beyond.

KEY STORIES IN TECH

📜 Latest in tech

Stanford researchers created an open rival to OpenAI’s o1 ‘reasoning’ model for under $50:

• Researchers from Stanford and the University of Washington developed s1, a reasoning AI model trained for under $50 using Google’s Gemini 2.0 Flash Thinking Experimental, rivaling OpenAI’s o1 and DeepSeek’s R1 in key benchmarks.

• The model, fine-tuned from Alibaba’s Qwen, was trained on just 1,000 curated questions in 30 minutes using 16 Nvidia H100 GPUs, raising concerns about the ease of replicating high-performance AI models with minimal costs.

• While major AI labs invest billions in next-gen models, s1 showcases how cost-efficient distillation techniques can challenge big-budget AI, though it still lacks the innovation to surpass existing state-of-the-art models.

Amazon to preview next-Gen AI-powered Alexa on February 26:

• Amazon plans to unveil an upgraded Alexa with AI-powered enhancements, enabling it to handle multiple commands in sequence, a major shift from the current single-request limitation.

• The next-gen Alexa will initially be free for select users, though Amazon is considering a $5 to $10 monthly fee, while also keeping “Classic Alexa” available.

• Development challenges reportedly delayed the project, with early versions struggling with basic functions like setting timers, highlighting the complexity of AI-driven voice assistants.

Google launches Gemini 2.0 pro experimental:

• Google has officially released Gemini 2.0 Pro Experimental, its most advanced AI model, alongside the general availability of Gemini 2.0 Flash and a new cost-efficient Gemini 2.0 Flash-Lite.

• The launch comes as DeepSeek’s reasoning models gain traction for their competitive performance and affordability, prompting Google to push its models into the Gemini app and development platforms.

• With a 2-million-token context window, Gemini 2.0 Pro can process massive amounts of text, execute code, and leverage Google Search, aiming to solidify its place in the AI reasoning race.

ByteDance's new AI creates lifelike videos:

• ByteDance has unveiled OmniHuman-1, an AI model capable of converting a single image and audio clip into highly realistic human videos, making it challenging to differentiate from real footage.

• OmniHuman-1 excels in generating fluid and natural motion across various formats, using a multimodal training strategy to enhance accuracy, even with minimal input, and can work with different aspect ratios and body proportions.

• The AI model, trained on 19,000 hours of video data, processes motion cues to animate subjects with lifelike expressions and speech synchronization, although it is not yet available for public use.

OpenAI rebrands itself:

• OpenAI has rebranded itself with a new logo, typeface, and color scheme, intending to create a more human and organic identity, as detailed in an interview with Wallpaper.

• While the original logo was crafted by OpenAI's CEO and co-founder, the redesign was led by an internal team aiming for a subtle yet impactful change in the logo's appearance.

• The company introduced a new typeface, OpenAI sans, designed to blend geometric precision with a human touch, and confirmed using AI tools like ChatGPT to calculate type weights.

LAST COFFEE SIP

☕Other news

Google to invest $75 billion this year on the AI race:

• Alphabet plans to invest around $75 billion in capital expenditures in 2025, as announced by CEO Sundar Pichai in the company's Q4 2024 earnings release.

• Spending on infrastructure to support AI ambitions is a major focus for tech giants, and Google is likely to allocate a significant portion of its capital for AI development.

• Google's overall revenues increased by 12% to $96.5 billion, with Google Cloud revenues rising 10%, driven by growth in AI infrastructure and generative AI solutions.

OpenAI Co-Founder John Schulman departs Anthropic after less than a year:

• John Schulman, an OpenAI co-founder who joined Anthropic in August to focus on AI alignment, has left the company, Anthropic confirmed Wednesday.

• Schulman initially left OpenAI to return to hands-on technical work but has now decided to pursue new opportunities, with Anthropic expressing support for his departure.

• Anthropic, a major OpenAI competitor, is rapidly growing with an annualized revenue of $875 million, selling AI model access through direct sales and cloud platforms like AWS.

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