Joyce’s picks: musings and readings in ML/AI, January 14, 2024
Musings
Applications of emerging technology and data/ML/AI continue to take off in the marketplace. It's exciting to see Walmart expanding drone delivery in Dallas. I think it is the first of many, and through the drone delivery network, much data insights can be gained to add to existing last-mile delivery and supply chain optimization. Staying on the delivery theme, drug-by-mail delivery can become a win-win for patients who have mobility challenges and/or desire convenience and for health insurers that want to improve drugstore operations. On the proprietary data side, data regarding location of the prescription drugs in transit, delivery conditions, and open rate of the delivery can potentially offer additional insights into patient-centric service.
Supply chain. Without robust and resilient supply chain, both the global economy and micro economy at the consumer level face disruption and consequences. Here is a good view on dynamics in supply chain in 2024.
HP's acquisition of Juniper is a smart strategic move. Juniper adds a meaningful chuck of revenue and profit to HP. Analysts have been negative toward this acquisition. In my view, in order for any major player to participate in the next generation technology/data/ML/AI race, they need to be a full stack. HP's acquisition of Juniper, while on the surface may not be accretive, gives HP the permission to be a competitive player in networking, networking optimization, manage more data workload at rest and in transit, and make an entrance in distributed and edge ML/AI where technologies continue to converge. Big players are owning the infrastructure and platform, and emerging upstarts can own the middle and use case/app layers.
Readings
Synthetic Data Generation Framework, Dataset, and Efficient Deep Model for Pedestrian Intention Prediction (link)
Relying on the Unreliable: The Impact of Language Models’ Reluctance to Express Uncertainty (link)
Probing the chemical ‘reactome’ with high-throughput experimentation data (link)
Congrats to the following startups!
XRHealth, a Boston-based provider of at-home virtual reality therapy, raised $6m.
ThayerMahan, a Connecticut-based company that focuses on maritime surveillance solutions, raised additional $20m.
Impact Analytics, a provider of supply chain planning and merchandising software with embedded ML, raised $40m.
120Water, a provider of water management and testing software system, raised additional $43m.
Trice, an Austin-based provider of a cloud-native API for real-time bank payments connectivity, raised seed funding.
Sunrise AI, a NY-based provider focused on financial and credit assessment, raised pre-seed funding.
Ask-AI, a provider of knowledge search and management for enterprises, raised Series A funding.
Axle, a NY-based provider focused on improving corporate access and connections to the capital market, raised pre-seed funding.
Korr, a NY-based insurance technology and data infrastructure provider, raises pre-seed funding.
GolfForever, a CO-based provider of training system for golfers, raised Series A funding.
Rune Labs, a San Francisco-based neurology software and data company, raised $12m.
MimiVax, a NYC-based biotechnology company focused on the development of SurVaxM, a d vaccine therapy for glioblastoma, raised additional funding.