Nordic Data & AI Weekly: Evroc, Econans, Stylee, and all the latest news & resources
Recent funding, news, and resources for builders
Quick reads on value creation
Things to know, whether you are building 🛠 or investing 💰
🦸🏻♂️ Marc Andreessen on “Why AI will save the world” - sharing his views that far from being a threat, AI is a transformative technology that has the potential to augment human intelligence, improve various aspects of life, and solve complex global issues.
👩🏼🏫 OpenAI released a guide with practical strategies and tactics for getting better results from GPTs.
Recent AI funding in the Nordics & Baltics
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🇸🇪 Evroc: A secure, sovereign, and sustainable hyperscale cloud with best-in-class services and developer experience. Raised $14.14m from EQT Ventures and Norrsken VC (link).
🇸🇪 Econans: Accelerating the energy transition of buildings with data analytics and simulation. Raised $1.34m from Almi Invest and angels.
🇸🇪 Stylee: Transforming the online shopping experience for fashion retail customers with a custom AI model for personal recommendations in online shopping. Raised $192k from Bling Capital Sweden.
Latest AI news & best reads in the Nordics & Baltics
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🇳🇴 A list of 40 Norwegian AI companies.
📱 OpenAI’s ChatGPT mobile app is now available in Sweden (and possibly other countries across the Nordics & Baltics).
If there is some relevant Nordic AI news or funding that is missing from this newsletter, feel free to share by replying directly or emailing nordicaiweekly@substack.com and I’ll look to spread the word next week. Thanks!
News from the wider world 🌍 🌎 🌏
🆕 While the undoubted headline news at Apple’s WWDC 2023 Conference was the announcement of the Vision Pro headset, which may represent a real leap forward for AR and VR, Apple also revealed just how much work it’s doing in state of the art AI. New features include improved iPhone autocorrect based on ML using a transformer language model, a Digital Persona feature based on a 3D scan of the user’s face and body, improvements to AirPods Pro noise cancellation, and object recognition for photo organisation.
Notably, the term “AI” was not mentioned a single time during the 2-hour keynote, as Apple, in typical style, put all focus on the features being enabled by the technology rather than the technology itself. Contrast that to the 100 times Sundar Pichai mentioned AI at the recent Google I/O event, or the exponential increase in AI-related mentions earnings calls and other transcripts of publicly traded companies.
📱 Consumer AI is on the rise as Character.AI claims to have had over 1.7 million new installs of its mobile app in less than a week on the market. The app, which offers customisable AI companions with distinct personalities, as well as the ability for users to create their own characters, has already been achieving 200 million visits per month for the web app.
On safety and regulation…
⚠️ Yoshua Bengio, another of the ‘Godfathers’ of AI has voiced concerns about the direction and speed at which AI is developing.
Here is his longer look at ‘How Rogue AIs may arise’.
🧘🏻♂️ Offering the alternative perspective, another prominent researcher has dismissed AI extinction fears and expressed frustration with the current discourse around AI risk.
🇪🇺 🇺🇸 EU and US lawmakers are moving quickly to draft an AI Code of Conduct for businesses to voluntarily sign up to.
🇪🇺 The EU wants platforms to label AI-generated content to fight disinformation, meaning that services with the potential to disseminate AI-generated disinformation should put in place “technology to recognise such content and clearly label this to users”.
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