Welcome to the AI Ecosystem Report, featuring practitioner analyst and entrepreneur Toni Witt. This series is intended to deliver the timely intelligence about artificial intelligence (AI) you need to get up to speed for an upcoming client engagement or board meeting.
Highlights
Innovation (00:42)
Google Cloud and NVIDIA partnered to bring new GenAI products and services to Google’s developer community. Google announced its adoption of NVIDIA’s Grace Blackwell platform and DGX cloud service directly on Google Cloud. It will be one of the first cloud providers to offer this platform. NVIDIA’s microservices provide developers with an open platform to train Google’s Gemma family of open-source LLM using their preferred frameworks.
Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian commented that Google’s partnership with NVIDIA has been at the hardware level and now extends across the portfolio, from GPU accelerators to the software ecosystem.
Funding (03:12)
FundGuard raised $100 million in Series C funding. Now, the company has raised over $150 million to date and has reached a $400 million valuation. FundGuard is tackling large-scale investment operations. Its AI-powered SaaS platform helps fund managers, asset managers, and fund administrators modernize and simplify their fund accounting workflows and operations. It’s the first cloud-native platform to support fund managers not only by bringing these operations onto the cloud but also by automating the processes to gain insights to use AI more efficiently.
The AI Ecosystem Q1 2024 Report compiles the innovations, funding, and products highlighted in AI Ecosystem Reports from the first quarter of 2024. Download now for perspectives on the companies, investments, innovations, and solutions shaping the future of AI.
Solution of the Week (05:10)
H&R Block, a leader in the assisted tax preparation space, has partnered with Microsoft, specifically its Azure OpenAI Service. Having been working together for nearly a year now, these two players are building a GenAI tax assistant. The first product, H&R Block’s AI taxes system, was released in December 2023.
Jamil Khan, Chief Strategy and Small Business Officer for H&R Block, pointed out in an interview with Andreessen Horowitz, that they have had a unique focus on presenting customers with a hybrid solution.
This tax assistant, taking the form of a chatbot, will be especially useful in a few key areas:
- Information and awareness: It can help users understand key terms and concepts with taxes.
- Preparation: It can guide users through filing on their own with questions and prompts.
- Tax codes: It aids users in staying on top of changes in the tax code and highlights any nuanced policies relevant to user-specific situations.
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