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Surge AI Reportedly Targeting $1 Billion in First-Ever Fundraise

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Data labeling company Surge AI is reportedly planning a $1 billion funding round.

The firm has hired advisors for the capital raise, which would be the company’s first, Reuters reported Tuesday (July 1), citing sources familiar with the matter.

Those sources said Surge, founded by former Google and Meta engineer Edwin Chen, is aiming for a valuation of more than $15 billion.

According to the report, the company took in more than $1 billion in revenue last year, while its better-known rival, Scale AI, reported $870 million in revenue in the same period.

Scale was valued at nearly $29 billion when Meta took a 49% stake in the company and hired away CEO Alexandr Wang as chief AI officer for its new Superintelligence Labs.

The Reuters report notes that Surge is benefitting from Scale AI’s customer losses in the wake Meta’s investment, as are competitors like OpenAI and Google.

Google had been Scale’s largest customer, and is now among the companies planning to move away from the platform due to concerns that being tied to Scale could expose their research priorities to Meta. Scale has said its business is strong, and it is committed to guarding customer data, the Reuters report added.

In other artificial intelligence (AI) news, PYMNTS wrote earlier this week about the increasing number of chief financial officers (CFOs) who see generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) as “very” or “extremely” important to their companies.

The ranks of these executives have about doubled across use cases, according to the forthcoming CAIO report from PYMNTS Intelligence.

“These high-impact companies are also pulling away from the pack when it comes to deploying GenAI effectively in their businesses,” PYMNTS wrote. “While most companies use GenAI to generate content, high-impact firms tend to use it for more strategic and advanced functions while lower-impact firms mainly are using the technology for entry-level tasks.”

Among high-impact companies, the three main use cases for GenAI product and service innovation; generating real-time, automated responses to customer queries; and developing contextualized emails or recommendations. Each was mentioned by 87.5% of CFOs.

The importance of these use cases have nearly or more than doubled compared to a year ago, according to the CFOs interviewed for the report.

“Among medium- and low-impact companies — those in which GenAI still remains in early to mid-stage deployment or relegated to entry-level tasks — CFOs generally see smaller gains or even declines in the impact of GenAI on their businesses, year over year,” PYMNTS added.



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El Salvador Evolves AI Strategy by Launching Nvidia-Powered National Lab – Bitcoin.com News

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El Salvador Evolves AI Strategy by Launching Nvidia-Powered National Lab  Bitcoin.com News



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Scientists create biological artificial intelligence system

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The original development of directed evolution, performed first in bacteria, was recognised by the 2018 Noble Prize in Chemistry.

“The invention of directed evolution changed the trajectory of biochemistry. Now, with PROTEUS, we can program a mammalian cell with a genetic problem we aren’t sure how to solve. Letting our system run continuously means we can check in regularly to understand just how the system is solving our genetic challenge,” said lead researcher Dr Christopher Denes from the Charles Perkins Centre and School of Life and Environmental Sciences

The biggest challenge Dr Denes and the team faced was how to make sure the mammalian cell could withstand the multiple cycles of evolution and mutations and remain stable, without the system “cheating” and coming up with a trivial solution that doesn’t answer the intended question.

They found the key was using chimeric virus-like particles, a design consisting of taking the outside shell of one virus and combining it with the genes of another virus, which blocked the system from cheating.

The design used parts of two significantly different virus families creating the best of both worlds. The resulting system allowed the cells to process many different possible solutions in parallel, with improved solutions winning and becoming more dominant while incorrect solutions instead disappear.

“PROTEUS is stable, robust and has been validated by independent labs. We welcome other labs to adopt this technique. By applying PROTEUS, we hope to empower the development of a new generation of enzymes, molecular tools and therapeutics,” Dr Denes said.

“We made this system open source for the research community, and we are excited to see what people use it for, our goals will be to enhance gene-editing technologies, or to fine tune mRNA medicines for more potent and specific effects,” Professor Neely said.



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When It’s Time to Leave a Career You’re Passionate About

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From commencement speeches to career advice columns, the call to “follow your passion” is all around us. The advice, increasingly doled out and internalized, is clear: Find work you love, and pursue it relentlessly. But a wealth of research shows that we don’t often get it right on the first try. Pursuing a passion can leave you burned out or misaligned with who you’ve become.





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