Technology

➚ MOVE FAST: Deal flow. AI has helped boost the fortunes of SoftBank and its CEO, Masayoshi Son, is betting big on the technology. Its latest move is acquiring Nvidia rival Graphcore, a British chipmaker that struggled to win over companies. The deal was reportedly worth $600 million, less than the $700 million or so it raised from VCs. Graphcore said it will continue to build “next-generation” AI chips to help build AGI.

➘ BREAK THINGS: Deal a blow. Microsoft’s efforts to ally concerns about its $1.5 billion investment in UAE AI firm G42 aren’t working. Michael McCaul and John Moolenaar, leaders of two key committees in the US House, called for the White House to scrutinize the deal over concerns about G42’s ties to China, and if that could undermine US national security. The Emirati venture said earlier this year it has shed its Chinese investments.

It’s going to be easier for anyone to become a global thought leader. TED talk presentations in English will now reach people who speak Brazilian Portuguese, French, German, Italian, and Spanish. The organization has launched a pilot program where it uses AI to translate speakers’ voices into multiple languages.

It won’t just be subtitles. Using generative AI, presenters’ voices will be cloned so that they sound like themselves speaking a foreign language and their lip movements will be digitally changed to match the words.

This isn’t the first implementation of this kind of technology, but the fact that TED is adopting it is a milestone of sorts, given how influential the talks are and the risk to the TED brand if it goes awry.

TED, which partnered with a company called Panjaya on the process, said it took steps to ensure the subtleties of its speakers’ ideas were translated properly.

UK universities push for more government funds to help startups

THE SCOOP

Top UK universities are urging the newly elected Labor government to significantly increase funding for startups spun out of academia to £108 million ($140 million) per year, as countries race to capitalize on the AI revolution.

The UK has the third biggest tech industry, valued over $1 trillion, behind the US and China. It’s a research powerhouse, and its universities, often ranked among the world’s best, are the strongest pathways toward creating new commercial technologies. But the process of spinning out companies from academia is notoriously difficult, especially compared to the US where companies like Google got their start at universities, and is just beginning to be overhauled.

Negotiations between universities and startups over term sheets dragged on for far too long, taking 11 months on average, according to an independent review conducted last year on behalf of the government’s Department for Science, Innovation and Technology and Treasury.

The technology transfer offices (TTOs) in charge of managing a school’s IP demanded an excessively large equity stake, with many asking for 50% or more. Companies also lacked proof-of-concept funding needed to demonstrate the feasibility of their technology to attract early stage investors.

In response to the review’s findings, Jeremy Hunt, the former UK finance minister, promised to give £20 million over three years to help founders begin to commercialize technologies. Ananay Aguilar, who leads TenU, a collaboration of ten TTOs from the UK, US, and Belgium, told Semafor that the British government needs to provide more funding.

“If you look at the proof-of-concept funds available to Stanford in the US or KU Leuven in Belgium, they each manage a [comparable amount] per year. So we need to scale that,” she said. TenU is now aiming to increase proof-of-concept funding to an annual £108 million from taxpayer funds.

Aguilar is hopeful that the new Labor leadership will be cooperative given the party’s promises to revitalize the British economy.

“I think this government is paying a lot of attention to innovation. One very, very promising sign is that they have appointed one of the most senior and knowledgeable civil servants in this area, Sir Patrick Vallance, to be Minister of State for Science, Research and Innovation,” she said.

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The number of levels charting OpenAI’s progress toward developing AGI. CEO Sam Altman told the company’s employees that it was nearing level 2, where the technology is still rudimentary but can start to perform tasks that require reasoning, according to Bloomberg. Level 5 is the holy grail, where AGI has been reached, and machines have superhuman skills.

It was a busy week for European regulators. They forced Apple to open up its tap-and-go mobile payments system to rivals, which ends a four-year probe that could’ve led to big fines. Still, EU antitrust boss Margrethe Vestager said Apple had not yet changed business practices that violate the Digital Markets Act based on terms for developers and its app store.

And today, in a separate case, the European Commission found that verified accounts on X, which carry a blue checkmark, are deceptive to users because anyone can pay for that status. Coupled with other violations of the Digital Services Act, the findings could lead to a penalty that amounts to 6% of X’s global annual revenue.

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