Every week, Quartz aggregates product launches, updates, and funding news from AI-focused startups and companies.
Here’s what’s happening this week in the ever-evolving AI industry.
ChatGPT’s advanced voting mode and writing update
The OpenAI logo can be seen on a mobile phone in front of a computer screen displaying ChatGPT output. – Illustration: Michael Dwyer (AP)
OpenAI announced this week that it is starting to roll out advanced voice mode in the web browser version of ChatGPT. Paid users of ChatGPT Plus, Team, Enterprise and Edu can start a real-time conversation on the ChatGPT website.
The AI startup also announced that it has updated the creative writing capabilities of its GPT-4o model to deliver “more natural, engaging, and custom writing.” The updated model can also work better with uploaded files, OpenAI said.
The Tülu 3 model family from the Allen Institute for AI
Rendering of the new model family from the Allen Institute for AI, Tülu 3. – Image: Allen Institute for AI
The Allen Institute for AI this week announced its Tülu 3 family of open, sophisticated models. The process of refinement or post-training refines models to perform specific tasks.
Through Tülu 3, developers and researchers can find open-source datasets, model training recipes, code and evaluation frameworks. The models range from 8 billion to 70 billion parameters, or the variables a model learns from training data that drive its ability to make predictions, according to Ai2.
Enveda’s $130 million Series C for AI-assisted medicine
Enveda CEO Viswa Colluru – Photo: Viswa Colluru
Enveda, a biotech company that uses AI to turn natural compounds into new medicines, announced an oversubscribed $130 million Series C funding round this week. The round was led by Kinnevik and FPV and brings Enveda’s total funding to $360 million.
The funding will help the company advance its pipeline of ten drug candidates. Enveda is building an AI-powered platform called a ‘sequencer’ that combines metabolomics data with machine learning and high-throughput biological experiments to answer two fundamental questions of any natural sample at scale: (1) What are the molecules?, and (2) What do they do?,” the company said.
“Some of the world’s greatest pharmaceutical breakthroughs have emerged from just 0.1% of nature’s chemistry,” Enveda CEO Viswa Colluru said in a statement. “We developed our platform to rapidly expand access to nature’s chemistry to find therapies at approximately four times the speed – and it is already delivering results in the form of a deep and differentiated pipeline. This funding will help us advance multiple candidates toward exciting clinical catalysts in the coming year, affirming our guiding vision that the chemistry of life is an excellent source of new medicines.”
Pickle Robot’s $50 million Series B for manufacturing robots
A pickle robot picking up a 50 pound box. – Photo: Pickle Robot Company
Pickle Robot, which develops robotic automation systems for truck unloading, announced a $50 million Series B funding round this week. The company, which calls itself a pioneer in the field of physical AI, also announced that six customers ordered more than 30 production robots in the third quarter for deployment in early 2025. Pickle Robot’s physical AI technology combines a vision system with generative AI basic models trained on millions of people. of real logistics and warehouse operations data.
“Pickle Robot customers are experiencing the value of physical AI applied to a common logistics process that challenges thousands of operations every day,” said AJ Meyer, CEO and founder of Pickle Robot, in a statement. “The new financing and our strategic customer relationships will enable Pickle to chart the future of supply chain robotics, rapidly expand our core product capabilities and grow our business to deliver tremendous customer value now and into the future.”
Lightning AI’s $55 million equity investment
William Falcon, CEO of Lightning AI – Photo: Lightning AI
Lightning AI, the company behind the PyTorch Lightning deep learning framework, announced a $50 million equity investment this week, including Nvidia (NVDA) and JP Morgan (JPM).
PyTorch Lightning has received more than 160 million downloads since Lightning AI launched a year ago. Lightning AI combines dozens of separate AI development tools on a single multi-cloud platform where developers can build, train, and deploy AI models and securely host AI apps.
“Building your own AI platform today is like building your own Slack: it’s complex, expensive, and not core to your business,” said William Falcon, founder and CEO of Lightning AI, in a statement. “The value for enterprises lies in their data, domain knowledge and unique models – not in maintaining the AI infrastructure. We have thousands of developers single-handedly training and deploying models at a scale that without Lightning would have required teams of developers.”
Thoughtful AI agents for healthcare revenue cycle management
Thoughtful AIs AI agents for RCM – Image: Thoughtful AI
Thoughtful AI this week launched its specialized AI agents for healthcare revenue cycle management. The AI-powered revenue cycle transformation company’s new agents include CODY for note coding and review, and CAM for claims processing.
“Our team of AI agents turns RCM from a bottleneck to a powerhouse, using AI and automation to tackle tedious, time-consuming tasks so healthcare teams can optimize revenue and focus on what matters most: patients ,” Alex Zekoff, co-founder and CEO of Thoughtful AI, said in a statement.
Reforged Labs’ video ad creation platform for gaming
Reforged Labs’ AI advertising for mobile game studios. – Image: Reforged Labs
Reforged Labs, an AI-powered video creation service for mobile gaming studios, this week launched its AI-powered video advertising service that it says can deliver customized, cost-effective ads in less than 24 hours. The startup’s proprietary AI engine has been trained with thousands of game ads, Reforged Labs said.
“We want to help level the playing field for game studios with limited resources,” said Robert Huynh, CEO and co-founder of Reforged Labs, in a statement. “With our full-service creative solution tailored for game marketing, studios can benefit from proven ad templates and AI-driven production and editing, all without lengthy briefs or large budgets.”
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