The Tel Aviv-based AI startup No Traffic raised $50 million in Series B funding. Its smart intersection is expected to alleviate traffic congestion, tackle CO2 emissions and reduce road fatalities.

Funding for Generative AI Surges in IPOs, Raises and Seed Money

It can be very difficult to read the current state of the American economy. There are high points and low points and all points in between on Wall Street and Main Street.

But one look at the latest techcrunch.com article menu will tell you there is a lot of money flowing to finance AI companies. Whether they are start-ups or companies that have received more funding, there is money available.

Fighting AI Attacks

Kyle Wiggers begins this week’s story round-up with a piece about CalypsoAI, which invents and installs generative AI guardrails. Good luck with that. However, while the task is daunting, investors are backing it to the tune of $23 million.

“CalypsoAI’s platform promotes the power and competitive advantage that using AI can bring but within a safe, secure and reliable way,”  CEO Neil Sereybrany told TechCrunch in an email interview.

CalypsoAI claims that its tools—deployed as a container within an organization’s infrastructure—allow businesses to monitor and shape the usage of large language models such as ChatGPT, via dashboards that show stats related to the toxicity of the models, user engagement, and more. Sereybrany says that CalypsoAI can prevent sensitive company data from being shared on models while identifying attacks coming from generative AI tools.

With the trail of success that chat AI is receiving around the world, this idea from CalypsoAI could prove to be a gold mine. A link to this story is here.

AI Teaching English in Real Time

Ingrid Lundun introduces us to Loora with her article about audio-only AI. That means you speak to this chat program. Lundun begins with:

The jury is still out on whether AI adoption really will spell the end of humanity as we know it, but in the meantime, we’re continuing to see a boom in AI startups and AI dealmaking. In the latest development, a generative AI-based language learning startup called Loora is coming out of stealth with $9.25 million in seed funding to improve people’s conversational English skills, no matter the topic, by way of on-the-fly, voice-based interactions with Loora iOS assistant.

Unlike many of the majority of generative AI applications right now that are text-based — you write out prompts for ChatGPT, Midjourney, and the rest — Loora is completely focused on audio. That is to say, you speak to it to learn, as you might do with a human tutor, and Loora speaks back to you. The startup claims that its AI tutor can understand and help improve anyone’s bad English, and bad English accent, across any topic under the sun.

Americans have always loved crashing the English language, sometimes into the brick walls of internet abbreviations. Other times we seem to enjoy bending words and their meanings in rock and roll lyrics. The Loora AI will certainly have its work cut out for it trying to correct our ever-evolving slang. The link to the story on Loora is here.

NoTraffic Raises $50 Million

Our last piece today is one from Rebbeca Bellan. She writes about an Israeli start-up that plans to use sensors embedded in infrastructure to control traffic lights and alert emergency services.

AI-based traffic management platform NoTraffic has bagged $50 million in Series B funding as it picks up momentum in cities across the U.S. The capital injection comes as the Biden administration’s infrastructure bill enters its second year and a host of funding programs kick in to alleviate traffic congestion, tackle CO2 emissions, and reduce road fatalities.

NoTraffic’s solution involves installing smart sensors with V2X (vehicle-to-everything) chips onto existing infrastructure at intersections, conflict points, or complex roadways. The data from both the sensors and from connected and autonomous vehicles on the road fuse form a complete traffic picture that captures the movement of cars, bikes, buses, pedestrians, and other road users.

“NoTraffic is poised to elevate traffic management beyond its legacy infrastructure boundaries,” said Tal Kreisler, co-founder and CEO of NoTraffic, in a statement. “Much like mobile phones disrupted the fixed line of their business, it was Apple’s AppStore that opened the door to a vast range of new applications, business models and revenue pools. NoTraffic‘s SaaS platform is designed to similarly create unique insights and functionalities that can flexibly be provided to stakeholders without changes to the infrastructure.”

Just in these three articles from techcrunch.com, more than $83 million is being invested to make use of this new and powerful version of AI, which can be adapted to so many businesses. The generative AI tide will raise a lot of boats worldwide.

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