Holiday edition

Hey folks,

Happy 4th of July to our US readers! Since it’s a long weekend and a new month, we’ve a special edition for you today, recapping all major developments in tech and AI over the last month.

Reading time is 3 minutes. Let’s do this.

Events that shaped June 2023

1. QR codes will never be the same

You’d probably remember QR codes as 2D black and white. But a redditor figured out how to use AI image generator tool to create artistic 3D QR codes!

Since then, tens of new tools were launched to help you create QR codes using any image! Zooming out, the world’s getting more connected than ever. A reddit post created a twitter trend that led to countless new apps and news coverage!

2. Apple Vision Pro: Spatial Computing Platform

Apple unveiled Vision Pro, a new mixed-reality headset that combines both Augmented and Virtual Reality in one device. This potentially marks the beginning of a new “spatial computing” platform and could potentially change how we interact with tech, from 2-dimensional displays to 3-dimensional space.

3. Meta’s Speech Generation AI

Meta leveraged generative AI to create the first all-in-one AI model that can -

• Generate speech from text input

• Copy any audio style in less than two seconds of audio

• Editing audio to remove noises and mispronounced words

The AI is also multi-lingual and outperformed the top models, while being 20x faster! It was so powerful that Meta decided to not release it to the public fearing potential for misuse.

4. Growing use of AI at work

The numbers don’t lie: Smart professionals are leveraging AI tools to work faster and better. And its not just individuals, companies are trying to upskill their workforce to project strength in the AI market. For instance, McKinsey reported 50% of its 30,000 employees are already using AI!

5. AI Gold Rush

We saw an interesting trend in VC funding - AI startups are overflowing with funding offers, while regular startups are seeing their valuation drop by median ~61%!!

In June, AI startups raised billions of dollars, with Inflection scooping up the $1.3billion alone! Meanwhile, VC are taking advantage of slashed valuations by buying startup shares in secondary markets.

If you fancy some startup stocks, take a look at platforms like EquityZen.