While there is undoubtedly a lot of very interesting things going on in AI, there is also an absurd level of hype with every startup trying to brand itself with AI. Got a website? Got a database? Yup — you are now AI.
The term overtook big data in the battle of the buzzwords last year as the graph from CB Insights Trends reveals.
So last week, we asked you, our very smart readers, to fill in the blank of the following sentence
“AI is the new _______”
1/3 of you think AI is the new bacon and 1/3 had no idea what I was talking about. This reaffirmed my faith in the CBI readership (Candidly, it was waning after you disrespected the selfie-stick).
Healthy Planet
We looked at funding and deal flow to digital health startups operating in the US and internationally, as well as some of the most well-funded non-US startups in the space. China-based Guahao Technology Co. raised the most in total disclosed funding at $536M.
The quant hedge fund is here
Quantopian, which Steve Cohen’s Point 72 Asset Management invested in, has started doling out investment capital to 15 amateur quants (see The Blurb for the article).
Right now, Quantopian has more than $10M at work which Bloomberg calls “one of the bigger tests for a theory of money management predicated on mining talent from groups of would-be investment stars.”
The membership in Quantopian — the crowdsourced quant hedge fund — has grown significantly as you can see below.
We’ll be digging into the results and the future of the algorithmic hedge fund with Jonathan Larkin, the Chief Investment Officer at Quantopian, at The Future of Fintech in June.
In addition to Jonathan, Andy Weissman, partner at Union Square Ventures (investors in Numerai) and Christina Qi, partner at Domeyard, a hedge fund focused on high-frequency trading (subject of recent HBS case study), will also be there to dig into the future of the hedge fund.
5 weeks ago, we launched a client-only newsletter (for paid clients only).
As a consequence of that, some of our research & data will start to become available only to paid clients. (For those curious, minimum for clients is $42,600 per annum)
The two most immediate changes you may notice will be the removal of Friday’s Mosaic alerts of high-momentum startups and Tuesday’s large deal roundup.
Those will no longer be in the daily newsletter and will be client-only going forward.
Over time, expect more of our research will be going client-only. We’ll have more news on this in the coming months along with a pricing update (will go higher).
Yesterday, we had a donut chart in the newsletter, and we got some flack for that given our consistent hatred of pie charts.
While I do think the donut chart was warranted in this case (although we prob shouldn’t have had a legend), today we’ll take a break from bad pie charts and share this illuminating map of Europe which plots population per capita.
We teamed up with Esquire, Quartz, Product Hunt, TNW, and The Hustle to give one lucky person airfare, accommodations, and some walking-around dinero. Enter here.
Interesting
Entrepreneurship thrives in non-urban areas.
Drone data
We updated our breakdown of six early-stage startups developing last mile delivery robots. Ranging from work on aerial to ground-based solutions, the companies included in our analysis are Flirtey, Matternet, Starship, Dispatch, Robby, and Marble.
New York Times. Nathaniel Popper (@nathanielpopper) writes about former chief exec at Lending Club Renaud Laplanche and his new online lending company that he claims will rival his former company from which he was ousted, with a mention of CB Insights funding and valuation data.
Bloomberg Quint. Tink Labs is in the process of raising ~$40M and aiming for a valuation of more than $1B, according to this report which references CB Insights research on unicorns.
P.S. Don’t forget to participate in our bracket to determine the most innovative consumer product since the iPhone. Round 2 polls close this Sunday. Vote here.
