🌶 Microsoft's 5th AI Investment: Builder.ai & No-Code App Revolution

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Top picks from last week 🚀 (May 8th - May 14th)

A quick highlight

Microsoft invests a “significant” amount in Builder.ai to democratise software development

Builder.ai is a no-code app builder/agency that powers entrepreneurs & SMB’s. They are like the engineering resource for all your software needs whether it’s a website/mobile app. Prior to this investment, they’ve raised a total of $195M and are just shy of becoming a unicorn.

As Microsoft's 5th AI investment this year, alongside OpenAI, Humane, Adept, and Spectrums AI, this strategic move aims to integrate Builder.ai into Microsoft Teams, benefiting its 280 million users with seamless software development solutions. Read more

This announcement comes alongside Google’s I/O launch where they released the ChatGPT killer (check out the bonus section below to know more!).

Everseen raises a Series A round of over $70M to fight against retail-theft 

Everseen, an Irish company that uses computer vision to detect and prevent retail theft, has raised €65 million (~$71.32 million) in a Series A round led by Crosspoint Capital Partners.

According to the National Retail Federation, retail-theft cost U.S. retailers $61.7 billion in 2019. To counter this, the company's technology uses computer vision software to detect a wide range of thefts, including shoplifting, employee theft, and cashier fraud.

Coursera Co-founder backed Kira Learning Raises $15 Million to create a new curriculum for K-12 students 

Kira Learning, an ed-tech startup is building the tools, curriculum, and support to empower all computer science teachers and learners in their journeys to technology mastery through hands-on experiences.

Backed by the founder of Coursera, the company has raised $22.5M to date. The platform hasn’t been launched yet but you can sign up for the waitlist on their website.

GPTZero, which has amassed 1.2M users, raises $3.5M from AI Leaders to preserve human journalism

GPTZero, an AI detection tool, designed to help users identify AI-generated content. The plugin works by analyzing text and images of a web page and comparing them to a database of known AI-generated content.

Deepfakes and synthetic media can be used to create realistic and convincing images and videos that can be used for malicious & unethical purposes. Even at Google I/O, we saw a similar stance from Google where all AI-generated images will be watermarked.

The startup is backed by industry veterans including Mark Thompson (CEO of The New York Times) & Emad Mostaque (Founder of Stability.ai)

Other Events 📢

• PostgresML raises $4.7M to launch serverless AI application databases

• San Francisco music tech startup Audioshake raises $2.7M

• Orby AI, raises $4.5M in seed funding to use Generative AI to automate repetitive human processes

Chief AI Tool of the Week 📢

This one has to go to the ChatGPT killer from Google! Try out Bard for free 👇

Bonus 🔥

For the most curious minds!