Apple’s announcement of the Vision Pro XR headset on Monday, June 5th continues to dominate tech news this week. This is pretty incredible considering it’s a record-breaking week for investing in AI startups. A four-week-old French AI company has raised $113 million at a valuation of $260 million. And it wasn’t the biggest investment of the week.
Apple’s Vision Pro reveal video has been viewed 50 million times in just one week, making it the most-watched YouTube video of the year.
CNet’s Scott Stein raves about the experience, but also points out that the killer app doesn’t exist yet. The company is currently releasing resources for developers. As I predicted last week, including an extra battery pack, $600 Zeiss corrective lens insert, AppleCare, carrying case, and local sales tax, the new Vision Pro could cost him over $5,000. . According to insider reports, Apple is now aiming to release his more affordable AR/VR spatial computer product by the end of 2025. CNN Business says Cook is betting his legacy on his AR.
Mark Zuckerberg has a lot to say about Apple’s Vision Pro. “I think this announcement shows the difference in values and the difference in vision that both companies bring to this in a way that I think is really important,” he said at an all-hands meeting last week. .
Of course, no story about spatial computing is complete without acknowledging the naysayers who invariably make a fuss at times like this. Entrepreneur, author and professor Scott Galloway is one of the most vocal critics, calling Apple’s expensive Vision Pro the “last nail in the coffin” for the entire industry. My Forbes colleague, senior contributor Paul Tassi, says big tech companies don’t get it. People obviously don’t want to wear anything on their face. Of course, as Henry Ford famously said, “If people ask what they want, they’ll say faster horses.”
Nvidia invests in generative AI startup Cohere in partnership with Google. Oracle and Salesforce are also participating in a $270 million round for the generative AI startup. The founder of this startup is from Google Brain, where he worked on large-scale language models. Cohere is focused on Gen AI for enterprise licenses and sees an opportunity to offer enterprises a Gen AI service that addresses proprietary data concerns about Microsoft-backed OpenAI’s models. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said in a release about the deal: “The team at Cohere has made foundational contributions to generative AI. Their services help companies around the world leverage these capabilities to automate and accelerate.”
Four-week-old French AI company Mistral raises $113 million in seed round Co-founded by former Meta and Google alumni, the company plans to compete with OpenAI by making AI “useful,” said CEO Arthur Mensch. The company is currently valued at $260 million and plans to release its first text-based generative AI model next year. Lightspeed Venture Partners led the round, with Redpoint, Index Ventures, Xavier Niel, JCDecaux Holding, Rodolphe Saadé and Motier Ventures in France, La Famiglia and Headline in Germany, Exor Ventures in Italy, Sofina in Belgium and First Minute Capital. and LocalGlobe are participating. In the UK, everyone is participating. French investment bank Bpifrance and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt are also shareholders.
Synthesia AI raises $90 million. The UK-based artificial intelligence (AI) startup announced Tuesday it has raised $90 million at a $1 billion valuation in a funding round led by venture capital firm Accel and Nvidia-owned NVentures. The startup’s technology has helped over 50,000 of his companies, including Amazon.com, create custom AI avatars used in educational and corporate videos.
Medivis has raised $20 million to bring XRay vision to HoloLens. Hololens’ FDA-approved software allows CT scans and XRay to be fixed to the patient’s anatomy with pinpoint accuracy. The Series A funding round was led by Thrive Capital, with participation from Initialized Capital and Mayo Clinic. Additional investors include Bob Iger, Kevin Durant, Dr. Robert Spetzler, Hugo Barra, and Coalition Operators.
Versed raises $1.7 million for AI to help users create RPGs. Led by Google alumnus-turned-entrepreneur Robert Gaal, the Dutch company has secured investment from Google’s Gradient Ventures. Versed allows users to create text prompts to create their own role-playing games (RPGs).
Paul McCartney Finishes Last Beatles Song With Generation AI He was able to recover Lennon’s vocals from a “little rope cassette”. “When Peter Jackson did a movie called Get Back, we were making a ‘Let It Be’ album and we could use something like that,” McCartney said. . “He was able to extract John’s voice from a little rope cassette containing John’s voice and piano. He can use AI to separate them.”
Meta’s open source Music Gen is free with Hugging Face. Mehta said the model was trained on 20,000 hours of music, including 10,000 “high quality” licensed tracks and 390,000 instrumental tracks from Shutterstock and Pond5. the best place. It’s free. You don’t even have to be signed in to try it.
Newly mapped building height.
Overture Map Foundation
Overture Maps Foundation Prereleases Jointly Built Map Dataset as Shared Asset for Location-Based Apps AWS, Microsoft, Meta, and TomTom launched Overture under the Linux Foundation in December. The goal is to build accurate, high-fidelity open maps as a shared asset that anyone can use for location-based applications. Newly updated map data includes heights of more than 6 million of his buildings across 34,000 square miles of major US cities such as Boston, Chicago and Santa Clara. This data was created using a variety of sources, including the United States Geological Survey (USGS) 3D elevation program. Build a footprint from OpenStreetMap. Microsoft opens up building footprint data. and community sources.
Scott Pelly interviews Google CEO Sundar Pinchai and the leader of the AI effort. This is from an excellent 60 minute piece that aired last month. Here is an example. “Bard read almost everything on the internet and created a model of what language is like. Rather than searching, the answer comes from this language model. Based on everything learned, the most It tries to predict the likely next word, so instead of going looking for something, it just predicts the next word, but it’s not like that.”
Amazon product pages come to 3D in Hexa. The Metaverse is sticking its head into the 2D Internet. Amazon added his image to product pages through a partnership with Tel Aviv-based Hexa, a 3D visualization platform that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to transform a seller’s existing 2D product shots of him into 3D models. Adding 3D product shots.
Spatial’s new Ready Player Me avatar.
Ready Player Me
Ready Player Me launches monetization tools. Cross Game Avatar Platform has released alpha access to its new suite of monetization tools for its premium avatar collection. This will allow creators to tap into the $100 billion digital goods economy by selling avatar skins, clothing and items directly within the app. Developers can apply for beta access to the tool here.
“KAGAMI” Live Mixed Reality Show Starts Screening in Theaters for a Limited Time. A new performance, Kagami, opened this week at The Shed Griffin Theater in New York City, bringing together theater, music and film with Magic Leap 2 mixed reality headsets. The 50-minute experience is built around a voluminous capture of the late composer and performer Ryuichi Sakamoto. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for New York audiences to see the mixed reality future of his live performances. But you better hurry. The show ends on July 2nd. In New York, a similar situation will not reappear for the time being. The play is difficult enough without all 80 spectators wearing his $3,299 Magic Leap 2 XR headsets.
4 technologies that aren’t big today but will likely be big in 20 years Benzinga editor Caleb Naismith makes some bold and not-so-bold predictions, including (1) BCI (2) AI (3) space and (4) flying cars. This retro sci-fi suburban fantasy of his will never come true. His 7 year old in me was very disappointed. It could be an autonomous drone taxi for oligarchs. Most people will never ride. Twenty years may be too early when it comes to space. When I’m his 83, we’ll still be talking about AI, BCI, spatial computing, and autonomous electric vehicles.
This week’s XR is also a podcast Hosted by Paramount Global futurist Ted Shirowitz, the author of this column, and Magic Leap founder Ronnie Abovitz. This week, Guest launches his new Zapbox that enables his 6DOF AR via smartphone for just $75. You can find us on Spotify, iTunes and YouTube.
what we are reading
The AI revolution will change jobs. No one agrees that way. (Sarah Kessler/New York Times)
Snapchat Spaces SDK takes center stage for developers (Charlie Fink/Forbes)
AREA15: Mall of the Future (Charlie Fink/Forbes)
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