If you’re wondering what happened to Amazon’s new and improved version of its Alexa voice assistant, you’re not alone. reports that the new Alexa is still stuck in its developmental phase and Amazon has cut off access to its beta phase including its new “Let’s Chat” phase. As a result, a planned late 2024 launch has been pushed back to next year.

The problem seems to be with its large language models (LLMs). The new Alexa is designed to from users but it’s also more likely to fail doing some of the most basic things the old version could do quite easily like create a timer or operate smart lights, according to a follow up report from .

Amazon originally planned to unveil its new version of Alexa AI in October but now the timeline has been extended into next year. (As you might have noticed, October has come and gone.) The original timeline planned to premiere the next evolutionary step in Alexa’s advancement on October 17 but Amazon decided to pivot and used the date to show off its new line of Kindle ereaders. Then in August, news surfaced that the new Alexa would be powered by and come with a monthly subscription fee.

As ChatGPT began to rise in popularity in the summer of 2023, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy wanted to see if Alexa could compete if it had an AI upgrade. Jassy reportedly started peppering Alexa with sports questions “like an ESPN reporter at a playoff press conference” and its answers were “nowhere near perfect.” It even made up a recent game score for Jassy.

Despite this, Alexa passed the good enough stage and Jassy and his fellow executives felt their engineers could build a beta version by the early part of 2024. Unfortunately, Amazon wasn’t able to meet its deadline.

Even with the new deadline, the new Alexa still has a long way to go to fix its problems. Some employees told Bloomberg that the problem outside of Alexa’s innerworkings is with Amazon’s overstuffed management and a lack of “a compelling vision for an AI-powered Alexa.” .

Global AI deal volumes reached 1,245 during Q3 2024, a level not seen since Q1 2022 reflecting how confident and resilient investors are about investing in AI.

With a 24% year-over-year growth, global AI deals far outpaced the -10 % quarter-over-quarter (QoQ) declines across the broader investment market. CB Insights notes in its State of AI Q3’24 Report that despite broader venture trends slowing down, investor resilience and confidence in AI remain strong.

CB Insights says that “while AI deals in Q3’24 included massive $1B+ rounds to defense tech provider Anduril and AI lab Safe Superintelligence, global AI funding actually dropped by 29% QoQ.” The 77% decline in funding from $1B+ AI rounds QoQ contributed to the 29% QoQ decline.

The average AI deal size increased 28% this year, climbing from $18.4M in 2023 to $23.5M. Deal size gains this year are attributable to five $1B+ rounds this year, including xAI’s $6B Series B at a $24B valuation, Anthropic’s $2.8B Series D at an $18.4B valuation, Anduril’s $1.5B Series F at a $14B valuation, G42’s $1.5B investment from Microsoft and CoreWeave’s $1.1B Series C at a $19B valuation. CB Insights notes that these deals alone aren’t responsible for increasing the average entirely on their own, mentioning that the median AI deal size is up 9% in 2024 so far.

U.S.-based AI startups attracted $11.4B in investment across 566 deals in Q3, 2024 accounting for over two-thirds of global AI funding and 45% of global AI deals. European AI startups attracted $2.8B from 279 deals, and Asian AI startups received $2.1B from 316 deals.

Generative AI and industry-specific AI lead investments

The anticipated productivity gains and potential cost reductions that generative AI and industry-specific AI are delivering are core to investors’ confidence and driving more AI deals.  

Enterprises have already learned how to prioritize gen AI and broader AI investments that deliver measurable value at scale. That’s one of the primary factors continuing to fuel more venture investments over other opportunities. Gartner’s 2024 Generative AI Planning Survey reflects how impatient senior management is for results, correlating back to CB Insight’s findings.

One of the key findings from the Gartner Survey is that senior executives are expecting—and driving—gen AI projects to boost productivity by 22.6%, outpacing revenue growth at 15.8% and cost savings at 15.2%. While cost efficiency and revenue gains matter, Gartner predicts the most immediate and substantial impact will be on driving greater operational efficiency. Gartner predicts that enterprises that prioritize gen AI integration will see significant increases in both workflow optimization and financial performance.

CB Insights provides a comprehensive analysis of the deals completed in Q3, reflecting the growing dominance of gen AI and industry-specific AI investments. The following deals support this finding:

Gen AI investments in Q3:

• Safe Superintelligence raised a massive $1 billion Series A round, indicating continued strong interest in large language models (LLM) and general-purpose AI systems.
• Baichuan AI, a Chinese generative AI company, secured $688 million in Series A funding.
• Moonshot AI, another gen AI startup, raised $300 million in a Series B round.
• Codeium, a code generation AI company, became a unicorn with a $150 million Series C round.

Industry-specific AI investments in Q3:

• Anduril, an AI-powered defense technology company, raised $1.5 billion in a Series F round, highlighting interest in AI for national security applications.
• ArsenalBio secured $325 million for AI in biotechnology and drug discovery.
• Helsing raised $488 million for AI applications in defense and security.
• Altana AI received $200 million for AI in supply chain management and logistics.
• Flo Health raised $200 million for AI-powered women’s health applications.

New AI unicorns more than doubled in Q3

Gen AI continues to be one of the primary catalysts driving the formation and growth of unicorns (private companies reaching $1B+ valuations). CB Insights found that the number of unicorns more than doubled QoQ, reaching 13 in the latest quarter. That’s 54% of the broader venture total for Q3 2024.

More than half of the AI unicorns launched last quarter are gen AI startups. They’re targeting a broad spectrum of areas, including AI for 3D environments (World Labs), code generation (Codeium), and legal workflow automation (Harvey). Among new GenAI unicorns in Q3’24, Safe Superintelligence, co-founded by OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever received the most sizable valuation. The AI lab was valued at $5B after raising a $1B Series A round in September 2024.

Gen AI’s enterprise challenges are just beginning

The potential of gen AI and industry-specific AI to improve productivity, help drive new revenue streams and reduce costs keeps investors resilient and focused on results.

From the many organizations getting additional late-stage funding to startups and new unicorns, the challenge will be gaining adoption at scale and solidly enough to sustain recurring revenue while reducing costs.

With CIOs and CISOs looking to reduce the tool and app sprawl they already have, the most successful startups will have to find new ways to embed and integrate gen AI into existing apps and workflows. That’s going to be challenging, as every enterprise has its data management challenges, siloed legacy systems, and the need to update its data accuracy, quality and security strategies.

Startups and unicorns that can take on all these challenges and improve their customers’ operations at the data level first are most likely to deliver the results investors expect.

Part of the mythology of Silicon Valley is the committed founder driving the company to a blockbuster IPO. In reality, startups are 16 times more likely to get acquired.

It’s not an outcome that’s frequently discussed, either. 

“It’s one of these things that a lot of people don’t really talk about. In Silicon Valley, we always talk about IPOs,” said Naveen Rao, VP of AI at Databricks and two-time founder, onstage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 on Thursday.

That silence can make the arduous process even more challenging for founders. “I’m so glad that this is being talked about as a topic on a panel, as a real path and a real outcome for founders, rather than the hallowed, inside secrets of investment bankers who strike a deal,” said Kamakshi Sivaramakrishnan, head of data clean rooms at Snowflake and a two-time founder.

“Acquisitions statistically are more likely than IPOs — arguably more successful in many scenarios than IPOs — and certainly something that founders have to kind of mentally and physically prepare for. It’s an endurance journey,” she said.

Rao and Sivaramakrishnan each built and sold two companies: Rao sold Nervana to Intel for $408 million in 2016 and MosaicML to Databricks for $1.3 billion in 2023. Sivaramakrishnan sold Drawbridge to LinkedIn for around $300 million in 2019 and Samooha to Snowflake for $183 million.

Both founders said they didn’t start their companies with the intention of selling them, but when the right deal with the right company came along, it made sense.

At its recent Huawei Connect event, the Chinese tech giant unveiled one of the highest-capacity storage solutions on the planet.

The OceanStor Pacific 9928 features 36 high-density 61.44TB NVMe SSDs per 2U chassis, each just 9.5mm thick, delivering up to 2.21PB of raw capacity.

Google has become one of the biggest names in the AI-based development ​​space on its own merits. The company is a pioneer in implementing artificial intelligence in mobile devices, offering advanced features and new possibilities. However, it has also implemented AI in its software products and services via Gemini models. Google’s new AI-powered virtual tourist guide is proof of that.

Since Google offers many products and services, you may not know them all. The Arts & Culture app is not as mainstream as Google Maps or Gmail, but it has a solid user base. As its name suggests, the app is a hub for multiple fun features and options related to art. For example, you can take virtual tours of cultural places (or “landmarks”) powered by Google Maps Street View.

Google develops an “AI tour guide” that offers commentary on what’s around you

Now, Google is integrating “Talking Tours” as a new AI-powered feature to the Arts & Culture app. Talking Tours harnesses the power of generative AI to give you audible commentary on artwork, locations, and other things of artistic value during virtual tours. The feature supports hotspots in up to 55 locations around the world.

That said, the feature isn’t limited to just Google’s predefined tours. Talking Tours can also generate commentary on what’s around you. To do this, the app will give you the option to take a 360-degree panorama that allows the AI to analyze the scene. Then, the “virtual tourist guide” will offer you helpful feedback on what’s in the scene.

Works on Google’s Arts & Culture landmarks

Talking Tours isn’t compatible with just any location, though. You have to be in one of the 55 hotspots supported by virtual tours. However, it’s impressive that your phone can do the job without a tourist guide in one of those areas thanks to AI. According to Techradar, the feature still needs some polishing. But this is expected given that this is only the initial version.

Talking Tours is available as an experimental feature in the Arts & Culture app for both Android and iOS. You can also try it out on the web version of the service.