AI Gold Rush 💰

Hey folks,

In today’s update:

📰 News: AI Gold Rush

🛠️ Tools: Hand-drawn sketches into images

🎲 Misc: AI-powered screening checks for renters

Reading time is 3 minutes. Let’s dive in 🤿

AI Gold Rush in Silicon Valley

AI startups are seeing record high valuations with oversubscribed funding rounds.

35% of startups in Ycombinator’s latest batch are AI-focused, with ~50% companies broadly related to AI.

Take a look at funding rounds this week -

• Runway, AI for video tools, raised $141M

• Typeface, AI for content creation, raised $100M

• Celestial AI, AI for faster data transfers, raised $100M

• Augmedics, AI for spinal surgery, raised $82.5M

• Gleamer, AI for radiologists, raised $29.5M

• Faros, AI for engineering teams, raised $20M

…and the list goes on with tens of startups raising hundreds of millions of dollars!

But, Pre-IPO startups are seeing a massive drop in their valuations, trading at a median discount of 61% from their most recent funding round!

Venture Funds usually stay away from secondary markets, but over the last year, they have become have become the biggest buyers of startup shares!

On the flip side, AI startups are seeing their valuations jump an average of 25% in the same secondary market.

New Tools
Leverage AI to grow

• SketchImage.ai: Convert your hand-drawn sketches into images in seconds using AI. (link)

• Goodmeetings: A tool that condense hours of meetings into minutes of key moments. You get recordings, transcripts, and insights organized in a searchable library along with meeting summaries & action items. (link)

• Podium: A tool to automate your podcast post-production. It generate show notes, transcripts, chapters, highlights, articles and more.(link)

• Vrain: Your all-in-one workspace search solution to help you instantly find information scattered over emails, documents and files (link)

Misc
From the corners of the Internet

• Meta explains how AI influences what we see on Facebook and Instagram feed - Verge 

• AI-powered “screening” programs for renter’s background checks are making housing crisis worse - The Lever

• AI funding craze - In the world of startup valuations, there is Generative AI and there is everything else - Pitchbook

• Thomson Reuters acquires Casetext, an AI assistant for lawyers, for $650 million in cash - Axios

• Calling a restaurant? An AI voice may answer you now - Deloitte

• Key Takeaways from Hugging Face CEO's Testimony to the US Congress - Giskard