AI Update: Booming AI Chip Profits and an Undisclosed Hack Attack

Welcome to the newest edition of FindBiometrics’ AI update. Here’s the latest big news on the shifting landscape of AI and identity technology:

Runway is in talks to raise $450 million in a funding round that would value it at roughly $4 billion. The company is best known for its text-to-video generative AI platform. New York-based General Atlantic would lead the proposed funding round.

Samsung has posted a 15-fold increase in operating profit for the latest quarter, thanks to AI-fueled demand for memory chips. Profits came in at 10.4 trillion won, or about $7.5 billion. The company announced these preliminary results just a few days before a planned walkout by union workers.

Lambda Labs is in talks to raise $800 million, having reached a $1.5 billion valuation through a $320 million funding round in February. Lambda Labs rents out cloud computing servers powered by Nvidia’s AI chips, and is likewise benefiting from surging demand.

Nvidia is on track to make $12 billion in China through the sale of AI chips, despite U.S. attempts to curb exports of such technologies to its geopolitical rival. In the coming months, Nvidia will deliver to Chinese customers over a million of its H20 chips, which are specifically designed to comply with existing sanctions.

SenseTime launched SenseNova 5.5 at this week’s World AI Conference in Shanghai, positioning it as a rival to GPT-4o. The China-based firm is well-known for its facial recognition technology, and for its alleged involvement in China’s repressive state infrastructure, which landed the company on a US blacklist in 2019.

A hacker accessed OpenAI’s internal messaging systems and retrieved details about some of its AI technology designs early last year, according to a New York Times report. Executives revealed the breach to employees and reported it to the board of directors, but decided not to publicly disclose it since it didn’t concern customer or partner data.

Apple is getting an observer seat on OpenAI’s board, thanks to the companies’ previously announced partnership. No cash is changing hands in their deal; rather, Apple benefits from getting ChatGPT into its devices (and a board seat), and OpenAI gets access to a whole bunch of iPhone users.

Akool has launched a “Web-Based Real-Time Face Swap” tool that lets users map someone else’s face onto their own in a live video feed. The startup is pitching the solution for “creating engaging content on social media, enhancing virtual events, and developing interactive marketing campaigns.”

The chatbot’s take: We checked to see if GPT-4o had any insights on SenseTime’s AI success.

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July 5, 2024 – by Alex Perala