Kyle Wiggers

Electricity demand is booming on account of AI. In a May 2024 report, Goldman Sachs predicted that data centers will use 8% of the U.S.’s total power supply by 2030, up from 3% in 2022, as cloud service providers expand to meet the demand for AI infrastructure. Assuming the current trend holds, U.S. utilities will need to invest around $50 billion in power generation capacity to support all the upgraded — and new — AI-running data centers.

Adept, a startup developing AI-powered “agents” to complete various software-based tasks, has agreed to license its tech to Amazon and the startup’s co-founders and portions of its team have joined the ecommerce giant. Geekwire’s Taylor Soper first reported the news. According to Soper, Adept co-founder and CEO David Luan will join Amazon, along with Adept co-founders Augustus Odena, Maxwell Nye, Erich Elsen and Kelsey Szot and other Adept employees. Adept isn’t closing up shop, however.

The generative AI boom is driving the demand for AI chips, which are purpose-built to train and run generative AI models. And major players, from VCs to startups, are scrambling to get in on the ground floor. SoftBank’s Masayoshi Son is reportedly looking to raise $100 billion for a chip initiative that would compete with tech giant Nvidia. OpenAI, meanwhile, is said to be in talks with investment firms to launch an AI chip-making venture.

Can chatbots replace human therapists? Some startups — and patients — claim that they can. But it’s not exactly settled science. One study found that 80% of people who’ve used OpenAI’s ChatGPT for mental health advice consider it a good alternative to regular therapy, while a separate report found that chatbots can be effective in reducing certain symptoms related to depression and anxiety. On the other hand, it’s well-established that the relationship between therapist and

Formation Bio, a startup focused on applying AI to drug development with backing from OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, has raised over a quarter-billion dollars to support its ambitious product roadmap. Formation announced Wednesday that it raised $372 million in a Series D funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz with participation from drug maker Sanofi, Sequoia, Thrive, Emerson Collective, Lachy Groom, SV Angel Growth and FPV Ventures. The new tranche brings Formation’s total raised to more

Stability AI, the beleaguered generative AI startup behind Stable Diffusion, has raised new cash. But it won’t reveal how much. Greycroft, Coatue Management, Sound Ventures, Lightspeed Venture Partners, O’Shaughnessy Ventures and angel investors Prem Akkaraju, ex-Google CEO Eric Schmidt, Robert Nelsen and Napster founder and ex-Facebook exec Sean Parker have injected fresh capital into Stability, the company revealed Tuesday morning. Parker has joined Stability AI as executive board chairman, sitting alongside Greycroft managing partner Dana

Joseph Phillips and William Corbera, both of whom come from entrepreneurial backgrounds, have been friends for over a decade. Corbera co-founded RevoPay, a payments processing platform that was acquired by payments solutions firm OSG in 2022. Phillips, for his part, led the national sales team at Seamless before heading up sales at ServiceTitan, a web-based management tool for construction contractors. In 2020, Phillips and Corbera — having worked in payments-related jobs for a number of

Yet another generative AI venture has raised a bundle of money. And, like the others before it, it’s promising the moon. Emergence, whose co-founders include Satya Nitta, the former head of global AI solutions at IBM’s research division, on Monday emerged from stealth with $97.2 million in funding from Learn Capital plus credit lines totaling more than $100 million. Emergence claims to be building an “agent-based” system that can perform many of the tasks typically

OpenAI is on an M&A tear. Days after acquiring database tech firm Rockset, OpenAI has purchased Multi (previously Remotion), a startup developing an enterprise-focused, video-first collaboration platform. A source familiar with the matter says that the deal is technically an acqui-hire and that most of Multi’s team — around five people — will join OpenAI following the deal’s close. Alexander Embiricos, Multi’s CEO and one of its co-founders, says that Multi will shut down after

The majority of companies struggle to extract value from their data. Several years ago, Forrester reported that between 60% and 73% of data belonging to the average business goes unused for analytics. That’s because the data’s siloed or otherwise pigeonholed by technical and security considerations, making it difficult — if not impossible — to apply analytical tools. Anna Pojawis and Tyler Maran, engineers who previously did stints at Y Combinator-backed startups Hightouch (a data-syncing platform) and Fair