Databricks' game-changer acquisition for $1.3 billion

Welcome to this week's edition of The AI Breakdown.

Here’s the big three stories of the week:

• Game-Changer acquisition by Databricks' for $1.3 Billion

• OpenAI Expands Global Presence: New London Offices

• Europe's AI future threatened by its own rules

Databricks Acquires MosaicML for $1.3 Billion

Databricks, the data analytics and AI company, has acquired MosaicML, a pioneer in large language models (LLMs), for a whopping $1.3 billion.

Its last investor-round valuation was just $222 million.

To state that the AI market is hot right now would be an understatement, that is 6x exit.

OpenAI Setting Up New Offices in London

OpenAI, the Microsoft-backed AI startup, is spreading its wings beyond its San Francisco roots and landing in London for its first international office. The goal for this new location is to forge stronger ties with local talent and policymakers.

It's also the home base for DeepMind, Google’s largest AI research division, so I guess it’s one of those, keep your friends close and your competition closer moves.

Draft EU artificial intelligence rules threaten Europe's AI future

Over 160 executives from various companies have warned in an open letter that the proposed EU Artificial Intelligence legislation could threaten Europe's competitiveness and technological sovereignty by introducing high compliance costs and risks, possibly leading to a withdrawal of investment and activities in the European AI sector.

Despite the serious concerns expressed in the open letter, Dragos Tudorache, who co-led the drafting of the EU proposals, seems convinced that the signatories have not carefully read the text of the proposed legislation and have just reacted impulsively.

Sounds like a case of TLDR. So maybe threatened is too strong of a word.

🌎 Around the Web

Here are some interesting stories and tools that caught our attention this week:

• Otter AI: Provides real-time transcriptions of meeting notes that are shareable, searchable, accessible, and secure (link)

• Krisp AI: This tool uses Voice Productivity AI to enhance the clarity of your online meetings, proving especially useful in our increasingly virtual work environments (link)

• Promptbox: A Chrome extension that helps organize and share your AI prompts, compatible with AI models like ChatGPT, Dall-E, and Midjourney (link)

• Monica: A ChatGPT-powered AI assistant available as a browser extension that can assist with a range of tasks, from translation to ideation (link)

• Eesel: An AI tool to organize your work documents in a new table, helping you find and create documents easily and oversee team projects (link)

• Docus AI: A health assistant that leverages AI to help users make informed health decisions, generating health reports and validating them with top doctors (link)

• CapeChat: This tool lets you upload sensitive documents like financial reports and contracts to get instant insights while maintaining user data privacy and control (link)

🛠️ The Best Open Source Tools

DragGAN made the top of the AI news and twitter a few weeks ago, now you can try it out for yourself with this open-source project.

🖼️ AI image of the week

Ridiculous AI images and memes from around the web.

Thanks for reading this issue of The AI Breakdown. If you haven’t already, subscribe to get the next issue in your inbox and tell your friends about us. Additionally, if you have any interesting projects or ideas, DM me on Twitter: @jjordanwade

Until next time, take it easy 👋
— Jordan Wade