Startup News: Moveworks creates conversational chatbot for businesses
Moveworks creates conversational chatbot for businesses
OpenAI has generated global headlines because of the many consumer uses of its ChatGPT chatbot. But startup Moveworks has put its AI focus on resolving IT issues among business enterprises.
And last week, the Mountain View, Calif.-based company announced its latest innovation – Creator Studio – a so-called “no-code” platform for building custom conversational AI interfaces.
“No-code” platforms use a visual interface that enables non-technical users to build applications by dragging and dropping software applications to create a full app. Users don’t need any previous coding experience to build applications using no-code.
According to the company’s press release, Creator Studio makes it easy for anyone — regardless of their department or technical skill-set —"to quickly generate conversational AI use cases, search for information and take action across every application.”
Founded in 2016, Moveworks has the backing of more than a dozen venture firms including Alkeon Capital, Bain Capital, Ventures, Comerica Bank, ICONIQ Capital, Kleiner Perkins, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and Tiger Global. The company’s last valuation was $2.1 billion as of June 2021.
Hugging Face has released open-source competitor to ChatGPT
Meanwhile, AI startup Hugging Face announced that it has released an open-source alternative to OpenAI’s ChatGPT. It’s called HuggingChat and, according to its creator, can ”handle many of the tasks ChatGPT can, like writing code, drafting emails and composing rap lyrics.”
A Techcrunch article reports that the AI model driving HuggingChat was developed by Open Assistant, a project organized by a German nonprofit.
Hugging Face has high ambitions for its AI products. It says that it wants to “build the assistant of the future” that can dynamically research information. The company also stated that it wants its AI technology to be open and accessible, “which means we must not only build a great assistant, but also make it small and efficient enough to run on consumer hardware.”
New York City-based Hugging Face was founded in 2016 and its last known valuation, as of May 2022, was $2 billion. Among its venture capital backers are AIX Ventures, Betaworks, Coatue, Sequoia Capital and basketball superstar Kevin Durant.
Nuclear fusion gaining respect and dollars from tech stars
Nuclear fusion is the same chemical process that powers the Sun. And in recent years, skeptics seemed to believe that backers of commercial nuclear fusion projects to create electricity wouldn't be able to achieve their goal.
But much of the skepticism seems to be falling by the wayside and a number of leading figures in the tech world are jumping aboard the nuclear fusion bandwagon, according to a recent article in The Wall Street Journal.
The nuclear fusion movement received a boost in December when a controlled fusion reaction at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California produced more energy than it consumed. This milestone is unprecedented, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.
The article reports that such luminaries in the world of tech and venture capital such as Jeff Bezos, Peter Thiel, Bill Gates Sam Altman and Marc Benioff are among those betting that the decades-long goal of building fusion reactors are “now within years of being reality.”
For example, Altman, the founder of OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, has invested in Helion Energy, one of the leading companies in the development of fusion reactors.
And both Gates, the founder of Microsoft, and Benioff, the CEO of Salesforce Inc., have investments in Commonwealth Fusion, which is developing compact power plants.
