🍪 AI chip companies are in the spotlight, from Nvidia to startups

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Top picks from last week 🚀 (May 29 - Jun 4th)

A quick highlight

Lightmatter, a photonic computing startup, raises a $154M Series C

Lightmatter, founded in 2016 by MIT engineers, is making chips that use light to perform AI computations which can be up to 100 times faster than traditional chips and more energy-efficient. This addresses a critical challenge in advancing AI development, considering that training a model currently consumes more electricity than that of 100 households. Furthermore, as AI inference is projected to account for 10-20% of global power requirements, finding a solution becomes even more vital.

“The biggest companies in the world are hitting an energy power wall and experiencing massive challenges with AI scalability. Traditional chips push the boundaries of what’s possible to cool, and data centers produce increasingly large energy footprints. AI advances will slow significantly unless we deploy a new solution in data centers,” said Lightmatter CEO and founder Nick Harris.

Certn raises a $139M Series B for AI background screening

Certn, founded in 2016, is a platform that uses artificial intelligence to automate the background screening process, making it faster, more accurate, and more affordable for businesses.

The latest round of funding was led by Deloitte Ventures. The company's customers include Uber, Airbnb, and Lyft. With the new funding, Certn plans to expand its operations and hire more employees.

Hyro raises a $20M Series B to build a healthcare focussed conversational platform

Hyro, a conversational AI platform for healthcare, announced on Tuesday that it has raised $20 million in a Series B round led by Liberty Mutual Ventures.

The healthcare industry faces staffing shortages and outdated processes. Additionally, the healthcare field has experienced a 20% workforce reduction.

Hyro aims to address these challenges by introducing automation through its platform. Serving as a replacement for traditional IVR systems, Hyro utilizes conversational AI to handle calls and texts. It can answer common questions, facilitate appointment bookings and rescheduling, prescription refills and provide backend engagement and conversion metrics. Hyro's automation complements existing staff without replacing them, improving efficiency and the customer experience in healthcare settings.

Merlin raises a $8.4M seed round to add a ChatGPT extension to any website

Merlin is an AI browser extension that serves as an all-purpose productivity tool that you can access with Ctrl+M on Windows and Cmd+M on Mac. Here’s a quick overview of what it can do:

• Reply to an email if you provide the original mail

• Summarize online articles from links you paste

• Give you advanced formulas for your sheet based on your prompt

• Deliver an overview of your thesis or guide that you can give to your readers

• Be your coding co-pilot

8flow.ai raises a $6.6M seed round to automate customer support workflows

8flow.ai is a self-learning customer support automation tool to help close tickets faster. Working in customer support often means navigating disjointed tools to find data and solve issues. However, many of these actions are routine and repeatable, making them ideal candidates for automation.

8flow.ai integrates with ticketing platforms including Zendesk, ServiceNow and Salesforce Service Cloud. As support agents work, 8Flow.ai generates automation and enables them to guide the AI toward the correct ticket resolution - constantly improving. 8Flow.ai also facilitates coaching, executive-level analytics and insights into agent workflows across various systems, promoting faster onboarding and time to value.

The round was led by Caffeinated Capital, as well as participation from prominent angels including Nat Friedman (Github), Michael Scarpelli (Snowflake/ServiceNow), Dave Schneider (ServiceNow), Howie Liu (Airtable), Slavik Markovich (Demisto/Palo Alto Networks) and others.

Other Events 📢

• Maximal Learning raises a $5.7M seed round to give students personalized instructions that cater to different learning styles. Read more

• App0 raises a $3.9M seed round to build a holistic customer engagement platform.

• Alltius raises a $2.4M pre-seed round to build AI assitants for product owners. Read more

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