Amazon is back in the AI game

PLUS: VCs want AI chips, AI journalism and Zapier's AI tools

September 29, 2023

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Daily Digest #252

Hello folks, here’s what we have today;

PICKS

  1. Amazon Bedrock is generally available now. In addition, AWS has announced new AI products, expanding its AI catalogue to help companies adopt generative AI. 🍿Our Summary (also below)

  2. AI chips are sealing the deal flow for VCs. Venture capital firms are leveraging access to hardware and their relationships with major cloud providers to help AI startups gain access to GPUs needed for developing AI models. 🍿Our Summary (also below)

  3. Zapier launched new AI features at ZapConnect to help businesses solve challenges and build custom solutions. The highlight is their new product: Zapier Canvas - A new AI-powered diagramming tool. Along comes updates to their AI editor, an AI chatbot and new integrations. 🍿Our Summary (also below)

  4. Google has created an opt-out tool for websites to control whether their content helps improve Google's AI models like Bard and Vertex. All while still being indexed by Google Search. 🍿Our Summary 

  5. AI is changing journalism—faster than you think. Over 75% of respondents use AI in news gathering, production or distribution, but only 32% have an AI strategy. 🍿Our Summary 

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NEWS
QUICK BITES

AWS launched Amazon Bedrock, a fully managed AI service giving access to top foundation models, plus other tools to build customized AI apps.

What does this mean?

Amazon Bedrock lets companies easily experiment with leading AI models like Anthropic's Claude and Meta’s Llama 2 through a single API. It simplifies development so companies can focus on creating differentiated AI solutions. Bedrock also helps companies customize models with their own data privately and securely.

Amazon Titan Embeddings model is a new addition to their suite of homegrown models. Amazon CodeWhisperer is getting an enterprise tier with code auto-complete using companies' private code. Amazon Quicksight is evolving into a generative BI platform with natural language data queries.

Why should I care?

Bedrock’s goal is to save Amazon’s position as the top cloud provider. With it Amazon’s trying to cement AWS as a one-stop AI shop. With their own coding and embedding models, they might have an edge over Microsoft which is offering OpenAI models on Azure and paying a hefty fee.

QUICK BITES

Venture firms are using their connections at Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and others to get AI startups preferential access to limited GPU chips.

What does this mean?

Firms like Greylock, Madrona, and Bessemer have been instrumental in helping their portfolio companies like Adept, Inflection, and Laredo Labs land deals for thousands of Nvidia GPUs from cloud providers. This allows startups developing AI models to bypass waits and secure the specialized hardware they need.

Why should I care?

The VC relationships are providing a competitive advantage to their portfolio companies in the race to build cutting-edge AI. Given the current supply constraints on chips, startups not backed by top-tier VC firms can face debilitating delays in getting access. Related read: Lamini ditches Nvidia in favour of AMD chips.

QUICK BITES

Zapier is announcing new AI and automation features to help users build one-of-a-kind solutions.

What does this mean?

Zapier redesigned their editor with drag-and-drop and zoom features for easier workflow building. New AI suggestions map fields automatically and generate notes. Users can now edit test records and test in bulk.

They launched the database tool Tables and App Builder Interfaces to create full solutions. AI Chatbot lets users build customized bots, and Canvas uses AI to diagram workflows visually. The focus is making automation more visual, collaborative, and AI-powered.

Why should I care?

These updates can help your business automate routine tasks, gain insights from data, and scale processes without adding headcount - freeing up time and resources to focus on strategic work.

Much of the talk about the business use case of AI feels you need to be too tech-savvy. These new features from Zapier can help those businesses automate routine processes, gain insights from data, and scale operations without adding headcount, potentially freeing up resources and time for strategic work that drives growth.

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