The company, which is called Hiverge, emerged from stealth today with $5 million in seed funding, led by Flying Fish Ventures with participation from Ahren Innovation Capital and Alpha Intelligence Capital. Legendary coder and Google chief scientist Jeff Dean is also an investor in the startup.

The company has built a platform it calls “Hive” that uses AI to generate and test novel algorithms to run vital business processes—everything from product recommendations to delivery routing— automatically optimizing them. While large companies that can afford to employ their own data science and machine learning teams do sometimes develop bespoke algorithms, this capability has been out of the reach of most medium and small businesses. Smaller firms have often had to rely on off-the-shelf software that comes with pre-built algorithms that may not be ideally suited for that particular business and its data.

The Hive system also promises the potential to discover unusual algorithms that may produce superior results that human data scientists might never be able to develop through intuition or trial-and-error, Alhussein Fawzi, the company’s cofounder and CEO told Fortune. “The idea behind Hiverge is really to empower those companies with the best, best-in-class algorithms,” he said.

“You can apply [the Hive] to machine learning algorithms, and then you can apply it to planning algorithms,” Fawzi explained. “These are the two things that are, in terms of algorithms, quite different, yet it actually improves on both of them.”

At Google DeepMind, Fawzi had led the team that in 2022 developed its AlphaTensor AI, which discovered new ways to do matrix multiplication, a fundamental mathematical process for training and running neural networks and many other computer applications. The following year, Fawzi and the team developed FunSearch, a method that used large language models to generate new coding approaches and then used an automated evaluator to weed out erroneous solutions.

He also worked on the early stages of what became Google DeepMind’s AlphaEvolve system, which uses several LLMs working together as agents to create entire new code bases for solving complex problems. Google has credited AlphaEvolve with finding ways to optimize its LLMs. For instance, it found a way to improve on the way Gemini does matrix multiplication to deliver a 23% speed-up; it also optimized another key step in the way Transformers, the kind of AI architecture on which LLMs are based, work, boosting speeds by 32%.

Cofounding Hiverge with him is his brother Hamza Fawzi, a professor of applied mathematics at the University of Cambridge, who is serving as a technical advisor to the company; and Bernardino Romera-Paredes, who was part of the Google DeepMind team that created AlphaFold and who is now Hiverge’s chief technology officer.

Hiverge has already demonstrated the utility of its Hive system by using it to win the Airbus Beluga Challenge, which calls on contestants to find the most optimal way of loading and storage of aircraft parts that are carried by an Airbus Beluga XL aircraft. The solution developed by Hiverge delivered a 10,000-times speed-up over the existing aircraft-loading algorithm. The company also showed that it could take a machine learning training algorithm that was already optimized and speed it up by another three times. And it has found novel ways to improve computer vision algorithms.

Alhussein Fawzi said that Hiverge, based in Cambridge, England, currently has six employees but that it would use the money raised in its latest funding round to expand its team. “We will also transition from research to building out our product,” he said. 

The company plans to make its technology accessible through cloud marketplaces like AWS and Google Cloud, where customers can directly use the system on their own code. The platform analyzes which parts of code represent bottlenecks, generates improved algorithms, and provides recommendations to engineers.

CARY, N.C. (WTVD) — The Wake County Board of Education held the first in a series of meetings to discuss the development of the district’s AI policy.

Board members learned about a number of topics related to AI, including how AI is being used now and the potential risks associated with the use of the growing software.

WCPSS Superintendent Dr. Robert Taylor said the district wanted board members to be well-informed now before developing a district-wide policy.

“The one thing I wanted to make sure is that we didn’t create a situation where we restrict something that is going to be a part of society, that our students are going to be responsible for learning that our teachers are going to be responsible for doing so,” he said.

A team from Amazon Web Services, or AWS, gave the board an informational presentation on AI.

District staff say there is no timeline for the adoption of the policy right now.

AI could be a major tool for the district, with the board saying it could help with personalized learning plans.

Still, some board members expressed concerns on how to teach students to use AI responsibly.

“I think the biggest concern that everyone has is academic integrity and honesty, things that can be used with AI to give false narratives, false pictures,” said Dr. Taylor.

Mikaya Thurmond is an AI expert and lecturer. She says the district needs to consider including AI training for teachers and develop rules governing students’ AI usage for their policy framework.

“If anyone believes that students are not using AI to get to conclusions and to turn in homework, at this point, they’re just not being honest about it,” she said.

For starters, she says students should credit AI when used on assignments and show their chat history with AI programs.

“That tells me you’re at least doing the critical thinking part,” said Thurmond. “And then there should be some assignments that no eye is allowed for and some where it is integrated. But I think that there has to be a mixture once educators know how to use it themselves.”

Something the superintendent and Thurmond agree on is parental involvement.

They both say parents should be having conversations now with their children about appropriate conversations to have with AI.

LEXINGTON, Ky. (LEX 18) — The enthusiasm coming from Dr. Brent Harrison was jumping through the screen.

“I am very excited,” he said, as we discussed a big development that recently happened on the University of Kentucky campus.

Last week, the school’s Board of Trustees approved the state’s first Artificial Intelligence major, which will offer a Bachelor of Science degree. Some hurdles remain, as approval is still needed from the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education and the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools.

“This is something our department chair, Zongming Fei, was in favor of,” Harrison explained. “He said, ‘We have to do this; we see the desire from our students; we see the way the job market is going.'”

Artificial Intelligence is the future, according to those who’ve grasped the technology and believe in its impact and benefits. Dr. Harrison, who said the curriculum is already in place for a potential launch in the fall of 2026, says it’ll cover all aspects of the concentration.

“Pretty much anything we’re doing with AI is having that ethics component. Dr. Judy Goldsmith, one of my colleagues here, was very adamant that no matter what we’re doing, the students have to be aware of the potential pitfalls and other issues that come up when using AI,” Dr. Harrison said.

Currently, the university offers a certificate in AI training, which is useful for those who might only need some components, but by offering it as a major course of study, Dr. Harrison believes doors will be opened to its graduates like never before. It’s Computer Science on steroids, for lack of a better term.

“This is the kind of degree you could go out and be a software developer, but you would be more practiced in using these AI tools to make yourself more efficient. You could also go into things like data analytics. And, I’ll go ahead and say it, you could go into game design, game development,” Dr. Harrison said.

He also noted that the interest is much higher than he initially thought it would be. No one has (or can) declare AI as their major right now, but he anticipates many will. And he’s expecting some students to either switch majors or add AI to complete a double major program of study.

“I think the interest is there, and I think we’re going to see that, but I do expect the enrollment to pick up over 2 or 3 years,” he predicted, again pending the approval of the state’s CPE and SACS.