TechCrunch Summary (2023-06-12 07AM)

Source: Salesforce pledges to invest $500M in generative AI startups

Summary
Salesforce is doubling its Generative AI Fund to $500m, which is backing firms developing “responsible generative AI…ethical” AI technologies. The fund has already invested in the likes of Cohere, Anthropic, Hearth.AI and newer additions Humane and Tribble, while two Salesforce tools, EinsteinGPT and SlackGPT, are also being piloted.

Fact

💰 – By 2030, Grand View Research predicts the Generative AI sector, being invested in by Salesforce, could be worth around $109bn.

🤖 – Salesforce is investing in generative AI technologies internally through tools like EinsteinGPT and SlackGPT.

📈 – According to KPMG, 65% of executives believe that generative AI will have a “high” or “extremely high”” impact on their organization in the next three to five years.

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Source: ABB buys smart home device maker, Eve Systems

Summary
ABB has bought German firm, Eve Systems, a smart home accessories manufacturer to expand its Smart Building division, which already focuses on office builds. Eve specialises in HomeKit and Matter and Thread technologies and will offer ABB customers an integrated offering for their smart technology needs.

Fact

💼ABB is a leader in industrial robotic arms.

🏠Eve Systems is a smart home accessories manufacturer.

🏢ABB’s Smart Building division focuses on intelligent and automatic lighting, air-conditioning, heating and movement detection for offices.

🏗️The acquisition of Eve Systems is to integrate their technology into Smart Building division for first-party hardware.

💰Financial information of the deal has not been disclosed.

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Source: Rex’s new app makes it easy to discover and share recommended places with friends

Summary
Rex, a new social app created by Twitter alumni, is now available for public use. The app aims to simplify sharing personal recommendations of places by using a combination of AI and computer vision technology. The app will curate playlists of places from photos in the user’s phone’s Camera Roll. The founder’s inspiration for Rex came from the difficulty of researching the best spots to visit. The startup has raised $3.96 million in seed funding from Accel, Khosla Ventures, and other investors.

Fact

📱 The Rex app uses a combination of AI and computer vision technologies to curate playlists from photos in the user’s phone’s Camera Roll.

💰 The startup has raised $3.96 million in seed funding from Accel, Khosla Ventures, and other investors from Twitter, Snap, and Pinterest, including Twitter co-founder Biz Stone, via his fund Future Positive.

🏙️ Rex curates recommendations for places such as restaurants, bars, museums, and other businesses, even trails and parks.

📸 The app’s proprietary ML model is trained on computer vision, looking for images of places and timestamps to determine when a picture was taken.

👥 Rex founder Aliza Rosen was previously a Twitter product manager who led the initiative to change Twitter’s character limit from 140 to 280.

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