AI Funding Weekly - Issue #9

Start your weekend a latte and a slice of fresh AI funding news ☕ 🍕 🤖

Hello, happy Saturday and welcome back to AI Funding Weekly. To kick things off this week I wanted to touch on a topic that I think is going to become more and more relevant over the next few years - the impact of AI on mental health.

This morning The Guardian published a very interesting interview with Mustafa Suleyman, the co-founder of DeepMind, in it he talks about the role he sees AI play in mental health and, wait for it - family.

“I think that what we haven’t really come to grips with is the impact of … family. Because no matter how rich or poor you are, or which ethnic background you come from, or what your gender is, a kind and supportive family is a huge turbo charge,” he says. “And I think we’re at a moment with the development of AI where we have ways to provide support, encouragement, affirmation, coaching and advice. We’ve basically taken emotional intelligence and distilled it. And I think that is going to unlock the creativity of millions and millions of people for whom that wasn’t available.” (Source - The Guardian)

The article talks about Suleyman’s disconnection from his Dad and how AI could end up playing roles, like a family member might, in the not-to-distant future. While it might sound crazy now, the last sentence above is powerful. If AI can be there for people in the way that only humans can be now, does that change the world in new and interesting ways? Only time will tell - I won’t even try to speculate now, but I will recommend you read the whole article if you find this topic interesting because it’s a fascinating one.

Okay, but before we invite AI into our family, let’s take a step back and celebrate some awesome startups that announced fresh funding this week.

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BeFake - $3M Seed

Well here’s something I haven’t come across before, a startup that decided to brand the company as a parody of another company’s name. In this case, BeFake - a clear parody of BeReal, a popular app for sharing photos with friends is going in a little different direction by encouraging AI-driven creativity.

In many ways the name is also a statement as the founders see people using BeReal in a slightly less authentic way, as honestly we all see a lot on social media.

“It was hurry, run downstairs and pretend you have 20 friends. Brush your hair, take a side pic, right? It was anything but being authentic,” she says. “So it’s less about BeReal and it’s much more about this full and total rejection of the authenticity movement, which is inauthentic,” Dumant adds. (Source - TechCrunch)

Personally, I think this is a very interesting idea and I like that it addresses what I think we all see on Social Media head on. The reality is your Facebook/Twitter/Instagram feed is often a reflection of the life you want to show off to other people but it often deviates from what your real life is like.

So in many ways BeFake might just be more real than other Social Apps in many ways, and with $3M in fresh funding from Khosla Ventures and a solid founding team, it’s safe to say a lot more is on the horizon here.

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Speak - $16M Series B-2

Speak is an English language learning platform with a lot going for it - they’re backed by OpenAI’s startup investment fund, they own Speak.com, and now, with $16M in additional funding they’re going to move into the US market.

To-date the company has been laser-focused on the South Korean market so expanding to the US offers significant growth opportunities. As you might have been able to piece together given who is behind the funding, Speak offers AI-powered tutors for language learners.

Speak’s claim to fame is that they helped 6% of South Korea’s population, roughly 3 million people learn English. And now, with their move to the US, they’re going to help English speakers learn a new language with an upgraded AI Tutor now leveraging OpenAI’s GPT-4 text-generating model.

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Martian Lawyers Club - $2.2M Pre-Seed

Okay, let’s be honest - this is definitely one of the strangest startup company names I’ve come across yet, and I love it. And no, there’s no way you could ever guess what the company does by looking at the name so let me explain.

Martian Lawyers Club is in the game personalization space, a part of the gaming world that has mostly been focused on content, but they’re going in a different direction by zeroing in on systems at the core of a game instead.

"The focus of MLC is on trying to solve the problem of video game personalization," Brestnichki explained. "A lot of the companies go about this by trying to generate more content and believing that it's the visual aspects or narrative aspects of the game that allow players to personalize the experience. But we believe it's actually the systems -- the things that provide agency to the player and allow them to act in the game and have the game respond back, which actually unlock personalization." (Source - Yahoo Finance)

As a gamer and aspiring game dev I find MLC totally fascinating. Honestly, game systems are often the toughest nut to crack and typically requires a ton of iteration to get right. I think MLC is onto something and with $2.2M in pre-Seed funding led by Fly Ventures, it looks like I’m not alone. I’ll definitely be keeping an eye on these Martians 👀

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Okay, that’s a wrap - I hope everyone enjoys the long weekend and as always - thanks for reading and please, tell all your friends, family, Twitter followers, etc. to subscribe!