Enterprise Weekly #427: AI Regulation, Enterprise Earnings, and More
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Enterprise Weekly #427: AI Regulation, Enterprise Earnings, and More
“Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks, such as pandemics and nuclear war.”
That’s what 300+ industry leaders warned in a statement published by The Center for AI Safety, a nonprofit research organization, earlier this week. Signatories included OpenAI CEO, Sam Altman, Google DeepMind’s CEO, Demis Hassabis, along with prolific AI OGs like Geoffrey Hinton and Yoshua Bengio.
Many see the call for regulation as a much-needed step with respect to the rapid advancements of LLMs, given its potential to catalyze malicious activity and eliminate millions of white-collar jobs. Meanwhile, some view the statement as a hyperbolic, publicity stunt, allowing the biggest players to further integrate themselves into the government for future lobbying.
Similar debates exist around if LLM-enabled applications are even ready for production in automating mission-critical functions in the enterprise. IT leaders at United Airlines, Johnson & Johnson, and Visa are excited about generative AI’s ability to automate certain parts of the code-writing process, while others argue that lowering the barrier for code creation could result in growing levels of complexity and technical debt. This comes at a time where organizations are already strapped for developers and are rapidly adopting Github’s Copilot.
Turning to recent earnings, our friend Jamin Ball pointed out, “Q1s have been rough.” For net new ARR added per quarter, only 7 companies added more in Q1 ‘23 than their quarterly average across 2022, indicating the lowest it’s been in ~2 years.
This is a reminder that in a challenging market, it’s important to return to business fundamentals - what will separate the winners from others is a differentiated product that can prove ROI.
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June 22nd: NYC Enterprise Game Night: Settlers of Catan
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📚 Read more news:
Bloomberg: Wall Street Banks Are Using AI to Rewire the World of Finance
Crunchbase: Downturns Recover In Years. Popped Bubbles Take Decades
TechCrunch: 3 Things Businesses Must Do To Secure Applications In The AI Era
TechCrunch: Salesforce Could Be Repositioning Itself As A Data Company
WSJ: AI Is Writing Code Now. For Companies, That Is Good and Bad
WSJ: Generative AI Pilots Have Companies Reaching for the Guardrails
📚 Read more (th)reads:
Company: Arthur
Role: DevOps/Site Reliability Engineer
Technology: AI Monitoring & Explainability
Funding: Funding: $60.3M from Work-Bench, Index Ventures, Acrew, Plexo Capital, Homebrew
🌟 Company of the Week 🌟
Predibase raises $12.2M led by Felicis
Data / AI / Machine Learning • Series A • San Francisco, CA
Founders: Piero Molino (CEO), Travis Addair (CTO), Devvret Rishi
Hopr raises $500K led by TEDCO
Data / AI / Machine Learning • Seed • Columbia, MD
Segmind raises $1M led by All In Capital
Data / AI / Machine Learning • Seed • Santa Monica, CA
Cognosys raises $2M led by Google Ventures
Data / AI / Machine Learning • Seed • Vancouver, Canada
Alltius raises $2.4M led by Stellaris Venture Partners
Data / AI / Machine Learning • Seed • Los Angeles, CA
Konfir raises $2.4M led by Triple Point
Future of Work • Seed • London, UK
UnifyWork raises $3M led by OVO Fund
Future of Work • Seed • Cleveland, OH
Platformic raises $3.5M led by Decibel
Infrastructure / Dev Tools • Seed • San Francisco, CA
UpCodes raises $3.5M led by Building Ventures
Data / AI / Machine Learning • Series A • San Francisco, CA
Zeliq raises $5.3M led by Resonance
Sales / Marketing • Pre-Seed • Paris, France
WireMock raises $6.5M led by Ridge Ventures
Data / AI / Machine Learning • Seed • Menlo Park, CA
Alcion raises $8M led by Walden International
Data / AI / Machine Learning • Seed • Santa Clara, CA
Deep Sentinel raises $15M led by Intel Capital
Risk / Security • Venture • Pleasanton, CA
Ariga raises $18M led by Tiger Global and TLV Partners
Data / AI / Machine Learning • Venture • Tel Aviv, Israel
Vartana raises $20M led by Activant Capital
Sales / Marketing • Series B • San Francisco, CA
Vectara raises $28.5M led by Race Capital
Infrastructure / Dev Tools • Seed • Santa Clara, CA
Cortex raises $35M led by Craft Ventures
Infrastructure / Dev Tools • Series B • San Francisco, CA
CoreWeave raises $200M led by Magnetar Capital
Infrastructure / Dev Tools • Series B • Roseland, NJ