AI Market News: EU's AI Act, Figure's Humanoid Robot and More

Here's the latest news on artificial intelligence — just for you:

EU Lawmakers Approve AI Act

The European Parliament voted “overwhelmingly” to approve the Artificial Intelligence Act, according to the Associated Press. The act could be a “global signpost for other governments” on AI regulation. The AI Act should become law in the European Union by May or June. AI regulations for the EU were initially proposed five years ago.

Figure Robot Demonstrates Speech-to-Speech Reasoning

The Sunnyvale, California-based AI robotics company Figure shared a video on X of a humanoid robot discussing and completing tasks with a human. Figure says that OpenAI provides the robot’s visual reasoning and language understanding, and Figure's neural networks provide “fast, low-level dexterous robot actions.” The update comes 13 days after Figure and OpenAI partnered to “push the boundaries of robot learning,” says Figure Founder Brett Adcock.

Microsoft Rolling Out Copilot for Security

Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft will make its Copilot for Security generally available on April 1, according to a Microsoft blog post. The Microsoft team says its security copilot is “informed” by large-scale data and threat intelligence — including over 78-trillion security signals processed daily by the company — and paired with LLMs to provide “tailored insights and guide next steps.” The generative AI tool is designed to help cybersecurity pros “catch what others miss, move faster and strengthen team expertise.”

OpenAI Plans to Release Sora This Year

Mira Murati, CTO of San Francisco-based OpenAI, said the company expects to release Sora, its text-to-video model, in 2024, according to The Wall Street Journal. OpenAI introduced Sora last month, and it is testing the model with red teamers and creative professionals. Murati made the comments in a 10-minute video interview on Sora with columnist Joanna Stern. When asked what training data OpenAI used to develop Sora, Murati says, “We used publicly available data and licensed data.”

Zendesk Acquiring Ultimate

The San Francisco-based customer experience (CX) company Zendesk is acquiring Ultimate, an AI customer support platform, to expand its AI offerings. Through Ultimate, Zendesk plans to offer AI agents that are “not just reactive, but proactive problem solvers.” Ultimate's AI agents automate up to 80% of support requests, according to Zendesk.

See more: 10 Top AI Companies Defining the Market

UK Joins Chips Joint Undertaking in EU

The U.K. is now part of the EU Chips Joint Undertaking, an initiative backed by Horizon Europe that provides access to 1.3-billion euros to support semiconductor technologies up to 2027. The U.K. is also committing 35-million pounds to the initiative. The move is expected to boost semiconductor R&D in Britain and help secure its position in the global chip supply chain.

Cerebras Breaks Ground on Condor Galaxy 3 AI Supercomputer

Sunnyvale, California-based Cerebras Systems, an AI supercomputer company, and Abu Dhabi-based G42, a technology holding group, broke ground on Condor Galaxy 3, the third cluster of their constellation of AI supercomputers — Condor Galaxy. The companies expect that Condor Galaxy 3 will feature 58 million AI-optimized cores and deliver 8 exaflops of AI.

Broadcom Expands AI Portfolio

Palo Alto, California-based Broadcom, a provider of fiber-optic components for optical networking and communications, expanded its portfolio of optical interconnect solutions for AI and ML applications. The optics technologies by Broadcom are designed to facilitate high-speed interconnects for front-end and back-end networks of large-scale generative AI compute clusters.

Zephyr AI Closes $111M Round

McLean, Virginia-based Zephyr AI, an AI platform for precision medicine, raised $111 million in Series A financing, including participation from Eli Lilly and Company. Zephyr AI, founded in 2020, will use the funds to improve its analytical speed and collection of training and validation data sets as well as expand its scientific and commercial teams. The company is developing data federation tools and ML algorithms in oncology and cardiometabolic disease.

Proscia Raises $9M

Philadelphia-based Proscia, an AI-enabled pathology software company, raised $9 million in additional Series C financing, according to VentureBeat. Proscia, founded in 2014, raised $37 million in Series C financing in 2022. Proscia recently received FDA 510(k) clearance for its Concentriq AP-Dx, which is diagnostic software that helps pathologists view, interpret and manage whole slide images.

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