2021 was a breakthrough 12 months for AI

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Enterprises continued to speed up the adoption of AI and machine studying to resolve product and enterprise challenges and enhance revenues in 2021. In the meantime, AI startups have skilled important progress, roping in main investments to enhance their product choices and meet the rising demand for AI options throughout sectors. The truth is, information from CB Insights Analysis reveals that whereas the variety of fairness funding offers within the world AI area this 12 months is simply barely lower than the final (2,384 offers in 2021 versus 2,450 in 2020), the quantity of capital invested has virtually doubled to $68 billion.
As we head into 2022, right here’s a fast look again on the milestones that formed the AI area over the previous 12 months.
January
To begin the 12 months, OpenAI introduced DALL-E, a multimodal AI system that generated photos from textual content. The corporate asserted that DALL-E may manipulate and rearrange objects in generated imagery and likewise create issues that don’t exist, like a dice with the feel of a porcupine or a chair that appears like an avocado.
Amongst different notable developments that month, the U.S. Division of Homeland Safety examined AI to acknowledge masked faces; Uber researchers proposed a mannequin that emphasised extra constructive and well mannered responses; Salesforce launched a framework to check NLP mannequin robustness, and AI fashions from Microsoft and Google surpassed human efficiency on the SuperGLUE language benchmark designed to summarize AI analysis progress on a various set of language duties. Fb and NYU researchers additionally introduced the event of a mannequin that predicted how the situation of a COVID-19 affected person may evolve over 4 days.
On the enterprise facet, a number of AI startups raised funding, together with Lacework ($525M), TripActions ($155M), Ok Well being ($132M), Harness ($115M), Workato ($110M), and iLobby ($100M).
February
In February, Microsoft launched a customized neural voice in restricted entry and introduced the main points of Speller100, an AI system that checks spelling in over 100 languages, whereas Google launched TensorFlow 3D to assist enterprises develop and prepare fashions able to understanding 3D scenes. Amazon launched Lookout, a pc imaginative and prescient service to detect defects in manufactured merchandise. The month noticed a big variety of fairness funding rounds within the AI area, with the largest ones going to information lakehouse startup Databricks ($1 billion), RPA startup UiPath ($750 million), autonomous trucking startup Plus ($200 million), SentinelOne ($150 million), and Locus Robotics ($150 million).
March
March noticed progressive AI bulletins from giants corresponding to Fb, Microsoft, Nvidia, and IBM.
Fb first introduced an AI mannequin that has been educated on a billion parameters and might study from any random group of photos — while not having curation or annotation of any sort. Nvidia developed with Harvard an AI toolkit referred to as AtacWorks to decrease the fee and time required for sophisticated genome evaluation. Lastly, IBM launched a cloud-based, AI-driven molecular design platform that mechanically invents new molecular buildings, and Microsoft launched Azure Percept, a platform of {hardware} and providers geared toward simplifying the methods clients can use AI applied sciences on the edge. The most important funding rounds of the month went to Dataminr ($475 million), PatSnap ($300 million), WorkFusion ($220 million), and Jumio ($150 million).
April
In April, the European Fee introduced draft guidelines for the usage of AI, proposing a ban on purposes concerned in social scoring and strict safeguards for high-risk AI apps utilized in recruitment, essential infrastructure, credit score scoring, migration, and legislation enforcement. The proposal additionally advised that firms breaching the principles may face fines as much as 6% of their world income of 30 million euros ($36 million USD), whichever is the upper.
Fb claimed to have developed an AI mannequin that predicted drug combos to deal with advanced ailments, Grid.ai launched a platform to coach AI fashions on the cloud, Cerebras launched an AI supercomputing processor with 2.6 trillion transistors, and Huawei educated the Chinese language equal of GPT-3. On the funding facet, SambaNova Programs, an organization growing chips for AI workloads, acquired the largest funding at $676 million. This was adopted by ActiveCampaign ($240 million), Vectra AI ($130 million), and Gupshup ($100 million).
Might
Google held I/O 2021 and made some important bulletins. The most important  was the fourth era of tensor processing items (TPUs) for AI and ML workloads, a language mannequin for dialog purposes referred to as LaMDA, and the Vertex AI managed platform to assist firms speed up the deployment and upkeep of their AI fashions.
Yelp constructed an AI to establish spammy photographs, AWS launched Redshift ML to allow mannequin coaching with SQL, and Asapp launched an action-based dialog dataset to assist enterprises develop improved customer support AI. Redwood Software program, a cloud-based enterprise, and IT automation resolution supplier raised the largest spherical of the month at $379 million, adopted by Asapp ($120 million) and Sima.ai ($80 million).
June
In June, IBM open-sourced Uncertainty Quantification 360, a toolkit centered on enabling AI to know and talk its uncertainty, whereas GitHub launched Copilot, an AI-powered pair programming device to assist builders write higher code.
Then, following Amazon’s footsteps, Google Cloud launched an AI-powered resolution to detect defects in manufactured items. Open AI, in the meantime, claimed to have mitigated the bias and toxicity of GPT-3, and Mythic launched an AI processor that consumed 10 occasions much less energy than a typical system-on-chip or graphics processing unit (GPU). The most important funding takers of the month had been Gong ($250 million), Iterable ($200 million), Moveworks ($200 million), and Verbit ($157 million).
July
Fb open-sourced Droidlet, a platform for constructing robots leveraging NLP and pc imaginative and prescient, and Alphabet spun out Intrinsic, a brand new impartial firm constructing software program instruments for the economic robotics area.
OpenAI, alternatively, made headlines by saying it had disbanded its robotic division and is planning to shift focus towards areas the place extra information is available. The transfer from the corporate got here after years of analysis into machines that would learn to carry out duties like fixing a Rubik’s dice. Simply across the similar time, DeepMind, OpenAI’s main rival, introduced AlphaFold 2, an AI system that performs the sophisticated activity of predicting the form of proteins.
On the enterprise facet, enterprise AI growth platform DataRobot raised the largest spherical ($300 million) of the month, adopted by Gupshup ($240 million) and Untethered AI ($125 million).
August
Tesla introduced plans to launch an AI humanoid for performing repetitive duties, OpenAI detailed an API to translate pure language into code, and Google introduced the SoundStream neural codec to suppress noise and supply compressed high-quality audio.
Databricks raised $1.6 billion in funding, taking its valuation to $38 billion and bolstering its place towards Snowflake, whereas Dataiku, which helps information scientists construct their very own predictive AI fashions, raised $400 million.
Different AI startups that raised main rounds throughout the identical interval had been company spend administration firm Ramp ($300M), name middle automation platform Talkdesk ($230M), travel-tech platform Hopper ($175M), and gross sales enablement platform Seismic ($170M).
September
DeepMind claimed its AI-driven climate forecasting mannequin carried out higher than standard fashions, whereas researchers at Bloomberg Quant Analysis and Amazon Internet Companies claimed to have efficiently educated a machine studying mannequin that estimates the emissions of companies that don’t disclose their emissions. Google additionally launched a research that confirmed deep studying can detect irregular chest x-rays with accuracy that matches that {of professional} radiologists.
The funding division was led by workflow automation platform Conexiom ($130 million), adopted by ContractPodAI ($115 million).
October
The North Atlantic Treaty Group (NATO) — the navy alliance of 30 nations that border the North Atlantic Ocean — introduced in October that it will undertake an 18-point AI technique and launch a future-proofing fund with funding as much as $1 billion. In the meantime, Intel open-sourced an AI-powered device to identify bugs in code, IBM launched an AI service to help with local weather change evaluation, and DeepMind acquired and open-sourced a robotics simulator referred to as MuJoCo.
The most important investments of the month had been raised by Material ($200 million), Hailo ($136 million), and Domino Information Lab ($100 million).
November
Nvidia and Amazon made main headlines, with the previous formally leaping on the metaverse bandwagon and saying Omniverse Avatar — a platform enabling customers to leverage speech AI, pc imaginative and prescient, pure language understanding, and simulation to create avatars that acknowledge speech and talk with human customers throughout the real-world simulation and collaboration platforms. The tech big additionally introduced ReOpt, an AI-driven device for provide chain route planning, in addition to Modulus, a framework for growing “physics-grounded” AI fashions, at GTC 2021.
Amazon, in the meantime, debuted Graviton3 processors for AI inferencing, AWS RoboRunner to assist robotics apps, and SageMaker Canvas, which permits customers to create ML fashions with out having to jot down any code. On the funding facet, Nuro ($600M), Simpro ($350M), Cerebras ($250M), Verbit ($250M), Lusha ($205M), Workato ($200M), and Grammarly ($200M) raised the largest rounds.
December
The Hungarian authorities introduced that it has teamed up with an Japanese European financial institution to develop an AI supercomputer that might be used to create a big language mannequin of the Hungarian language. DeepMind, in the meantime, continued its work within the gaming section and introduced Participant of Video games, an AI system that may carry out effectively at each good data video games (like chess) and imperfect data video games (like poker). In a separate growth, the corporate additionally claimed that its AI know-how helped uncover a brand new system for a beforehand unsolved conjecture, in addition to a connection between completely different areas of arithmetic.
Tipalti, an automatic accounts payable platform, bagged the largest funding of the month at $270 million, adopted by Dialpad ($170 million), SnapLogic ($165 million), and Smartling ($160 million).VentureBeat
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