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As AI Explodes, Investors Pour Big Bucks Into Startups (siliconangle.com)
Investment in AI startups is on a tear as venture capitalists and corporate investors scramble to stake out a leadership position in what could be the driving trend in technology for decades to come. From a report: The financial interest in AI, machine learning and related technologies is hardly new. CB Insights has tracked some $18.4 billion invested in 2,541 AI-related startups since 2012. But the trend is only accelerating. In the latest MoneyTree report from PricewaterhouseCoopers and CB Insights, which showed otherwise mostly stagnant startup funding, AI and machine learning companies shined, reaching an eight-quarter high of $820 million invested in 90 companies. A flurry of significant investments in a number of AI-related companies this past week underscored the point. On Wednesday alone, for instance, AI-powered analytics software provider CognitiveScale raised a $15 million round, voice AI startup Snips raised $13 million and, to top it off, machine learning consultancy Element AI got an unusually large $102 million early-stage investment just eight months after the company was launched. Then on Thursday and Friday, two other AI-powered companies, Conviva and Codota, announced fundings too.
First, there is nothing besides weak AI (i.e. the "AI" with no "I", better called "automation"). Second, it is not "exploding". There have been no fundamental breakthroughs for quite a while. There have been gradual speed-improvements, but they are, well, gradual. The only thing that has been "exploding" is the hype about AI, i.e. this is nothing but a bubble of hot air.
Of course some people will get rich from this, but there will be no fundamentally new products or services from this anytime soon.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Too bad 'AI' is just a fancy term for computing. :P This isn't any different than health startups or VR a few years ago, the rate at which VCs throw good money after bad chasing fads is insanity. in another few years it'll be something else, and AI will have been dropped like a hot rock by most of them. It's a new form of day trading: get in, profit off of the hype, get out. Though it lines their pockets nicely, it does nothing to help anyone or progress anything in a meaningful way, and it artificially inflates expectations. It could easily take the economy out again, eventually. The SEC is fast asleep.
Please fund our bubble