Plus: Element AI co-founder calls out Big Tech for role in war.
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Oil and gas tech startup Validere closes $55 million CAD with BlackRock backing (BETAKIT)
Calgary-based Validere has raised $55 million CAD ($43 million USD) in its Series B financing round led by Swiss commodity trading group Mercuria Energy as well as select funds and accounts managed by BlackRock.
Cowbell raises $100M to offer organizations continuous cyber insurance (VENTURBEAT)
Cyber insurance provider Cowbell Cyber announced that it had closed a Series B funding round of $100 million for its continuous underwriting platform. The solution uses AI to assess risks in the environments of small to midsized enterprises and then offers coverage against those vulnerabilities.
Corl secures $20 million in USD stablecoin for its revenue-based financing model (BETAKIT)
Corl Financial Investments Inc. has secured $20 million in USD stablecoin from Naos Finance, a decentralized (DeFi) cryptocurrency investment company.
Ukraine has started using Clearview AI’s facial recognition during war (REUTERS)
Ukraine’s defense ministry on Saturday began using Clearview AI’s facial recognition technology, the company’s chief executive told Reuters, after the U.S. startup offered to uncover Russian assailants, combat misinformation and identify the dead.
While some Canadian tech companies move to support Ukrainians, others cut ties with Russia (BETAKIT)
In a microcosm of global events, some in Canada’s tech community are moving to aid Ukrainians while others are cutting ties with Russian affiliates as the Russian invasion of Ukraine is in its third week.
‘It’s easy to trigger curiosity and anger’: Element AI co-founder calls out Big Tech for role in war (THE LOGIC)
Philippe Beaudoin is calling out Big Tech, syaing their algorithms are helping out Russia’s war effort.
Wisedocs closes $4.1 million to bring medical document analysis to “entire” insurance ecosystem (BETAKIT)
Wisedocs provides artificial intelligence (AI)-powered medical document analysis software. The startup’s “bread and butter” is making it easy for organizations to work with medical records. To date, Wisedocs has worked primarily in the independent medical evaluation space, serving third-party assessment companies, but, recently, the firm has started to see “quite a bit of interest and uptake” from national insurance carriers.
Despite AI race hype, US and China make a formidable AI tag team (PROTOCOL)
A new report from Stanford University’s Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence on the global state of AI research and investment states that despite the fact that many AI researchers work together across the globe, the largest number of cross-country AI research and development collaborations between 2010 and 2021 were among people from the U.S. and China working together.
Scribble Data closes $2.2 million to help data science teams train machine learning models (BETAKIT)
The Bangalore, India-founded firm has already begun building a presence in Canada, where it says it has seen strong interest in the feature engineering for machine learning (ML) space.
AI-driven Deepcell raises $73M to further single-cell imaging tech (FIERCE BIOTECH)
With artificial intelligence being treated as the next frontier of drug discovery and cell research, efforts to fine-tune the technology are expanding, which is music to the ears of investors that see dollar signs when they hear “machine learning.”
Bloom secures $1.4 million CAD, launches AI-powered platform to measure e-commerce product photo performance (BETAKIT)
Bloom’s initial focus was on helping e-commerce brands build photorealistic fashion models using generative AI. But after talking to a ton of e-commerce merchants, Bloom co-founders Aarlo Stone Fish (CEO) and Sam Dundas (COO) realized that none of the retailers they consulted knew which product photos were converting to sales, so the pair set out to solve this problem.
Machine-learning models more powerful, toxic than ever (THE REGISTER)
AI systems are becoming increasingly larger and complex, but despite the technology’s progress, they exhibit higher levels of toxic behaviors, according to the latest AI Index Report.
Mila partners with Twitter’s data and machine learning team (BETAKIT)
With a primary focus on supporting Twitter’s Cortex data and machine learning group, the three-year collaboration will include year-round open research engagements between both organizations to accelerate ML research across academia and industries. It will also provide Twitter researchers with “elevated” access to Mila facilities and other internal resources.
Deep learning is hitting a wall (NAUTILUS)
Few fields have been more filled with hype and bravado than artificial intelligence. It has flitted from fad to fad decade by decade, always promising the moon, and only occasionally delivering. One minute it was expert systems, next it was Bayesian networks, and then Support Vector Machines.
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