Author: LauraLorek@gmail.com (Page 16 of 351)

SaaStock is Europe’s largest conference focused on Software as a Service or SaaS.

It takes place in Dublin, Ireland.

But this year, SaaStock is launching its first Austin-based SaaS conference for a three-day event running May 31-June 2.

The conference, which is called SaaStock USA, features panel discussions and networking. It brings SaaS founders together with funders to help them access capital to scale rapidly.

SaaStock plans to make its SaaStock USA conference an annual event in Austin.

The conference first launched in Dublin in 2016, and its most recent event in 2022 saw over 5,000 attendees, many of whom were founders, executives, and investors focused on the SaaS startup industry.

SaaStock chose Austin because of its history as a startup hub and as a host to other technology conferences with a strong content, networking, and entertainment focus.

SaaStock expects over 800 attendees for its inaugural event and expects to provide Austin merchants a $1.2 million economic boost from spending on lodging, food, and entertainment over the three-day event. The event organizers expect to see that number exceed $10 million annually as plans to grow the event take root over the next five years.

“We’re excited to make Austin our home for future SaaStock USA conferences. We’ve long believed that Austin was the perfect city for the U.S. version of SaaStock. Austin is home to a healthy SaaS startup sector and the overall startup ecosystem is among the most active in the country. The city’s vibrant festival and music scene fits the experiential approach we take with our conferences, which places value on helping attendees create lasting connections through networking at entertainment-driven venues,” Alex Theuma, CEO and Founder of SaaStock said in a news release.

The SaaStock USA conference will feature over 50 speakers with proven experience as startup founders, executives, and trendsetters. Some of the notable speakers include Jason Cohen, Founder & Chief Innovation Officer of WP Engine; Mary D’Onofrio, a Partner at Bessemer Ventures; and Godard Abel, co-founder & CEO of G2.

Since its inception, SaaStock estimates that SaaStock Dublin has had a cumulative economic impact of over $500 million in the form of capital investment, M&A transactions, and new business deals over the past seven years.

“We have been attending SaaStock Dublin for 5+ years and have found it extremely productive. Nowhere can you meet so many SaaS startups in one spot in such a short period of time. While we’ve found several investment opportunities attending the events, we’ve also benefited from the networking opportunities and a chance to learn more about trends impacting the broader SaaS sector,” Kyle Poyar, Operating Partner, OpenView, said in a news statement. 

SaaStock USA will feature some of the following events and programs:

• SaaS.City (May 31): a one-day accelerator for SaaS workshops led by SaaS experts addressing five critical startup functions, including CEO/Founder, Marketing, Sales, Operations Efficiency, and Fundraising/Investment; locations to be announced. 
• Startup Program & Global Pitch Competition (May 31 – June 2): a launchpad for select SaaS startups to gain valuable feedback from SaaS investors and VCs.
• NightStock (May 31 – June 2): evening networking and entertainment includes a Welcome Party, Rainer Street pub crawl, and Closing Party. 

For more information about SaaStock USA or to buy a ticket, visit the SaaStock USA website: https://www.saastock.com/saastock-usa/.

By Laura Lorek, Publisher of Silicon Hills News

Last year, cryptocurrency, non-fungible tokens, blockchain technologies, and the metaverse dominated at South by Southwest.

This year, the buzz was all about conversational AI, particularly ChatGPT, which released GPT-4 during the conference. ChatGPT is a chatbot that uses conversational AI capable of understanding, processing, and responding to human language.

And one of its co-founders, OpenAI’s Co-Founder and President Greg Brockman, talked to Laurie Segall, founder of Dot Dot Dot Media, about the technology in a jam-packed keynote address.

1. This is freakier than HAL in the 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey. (My alma mater – the University of Illinois, gave birth to the fictional HAL) Conversational AI is a sea-change technology that will shake up the economy as much as the introduction of the Internet did. Key takeaways from Brockman’s talk were that ChatGPT is a breakthrough technology, and Open AI, the company behind it, has made significant efforts to make it accessible and user-friendly. ChatGPT is an artificial intelligence chatbot launched in November of 2022. “ChatGPT reached its first 1 million user milestone in a week, surpassing Instagram to become the quickest application to do so,” according to a UBS report. “ChatGPT-3 uses a generative pre-trained transformer (GPT) to generate largely identical text to human conversation. GPT is part of the broader family of large language models, which are AI models that understand and can generate text.” On March 13^th, OpenAi launched ChatGPT-4, which surpasses the previous version in its advanced reasoning capabilities. During his keynote, Brockman said, “this app really took off and people started using it, and we could see the gap between what people thought was possible and what actually had been possible for quite some time.” Brockman also expressed concerns about deploying the technology in a way that could be potentially harmful. He recalled a dinner meeting in 2015 attended by co-founders of OpenAI, including Elon Musk, to discuss the future of AI and whether they could positively impact the technology. They saw the potential for AGI, artificial general intelligence, and felt a sense of urgency to steer the technology in a positive direction. OpenAI started as a nonprofit research lab, hiring PhDs and open-sourcing code, but later realized they needed to scale and raise funds to make a more significant impact. The company aims to align its incentives with a good outcome for humanity and believes AI should be an endeavor of humankind, not just one company or individual. But even Brockman seemed a bit scared of the technology and the future. He’s not the only one concerned. On Wednesday, a group of technologists, including Elon Musk, penned a letter requesting a halt to all giant AI experiments.

OpenAI Co-founder Greg Brockman on ChatGPT, DALL·E and the Impact of Generative AI | SXSW 2023

The past year proved that AI is here to stay. We have seen AI disrupt every major industry, from search engines to art and music. The change will be felt in nearly every aspect of our daily lives.

2. We can unlock health insights and prevent disease from more knowledge about our genes. Personalized healthcare is based on patient genetics. I was surprised to hear Anne Wojcicki, Co-Founder and CEO of 23andMe, talk about the company’s healthcare focus. During the pandemic, 23andMe acquired Lemonade, which allows the company to provide medical expertise to customers and deliver care through a clinician group, physician consult, and pharmacy. Wojcicki noted that consumers often feel disempowered in healthcare, while physicians increasingly recognize the importance of genetics in patient care. She talked about the importance of pharmacogenomics, which can help match patients with the best medications based on their genetics. Wojcicki also noted that financial incentives could sometimes conflict with preventive care, underscoring the importance of consumers taking control of their healthcare. Along those lines, Wojcicki suggested patients should bring their 23andMe reports to their doctors to inform their care. Wojcicki also said conversational AI has the potential to predict and prevent health conditions. She discussed the possibility of risk prediction as a means of prevention. She said most of the AI currently used in healthcare is focused on disease optimization rather than prevention, but 23andMe is working on tests and research to predict behaviors that could help prevent disease.

3. Welcome to the surveillance economy. For the first time (let me know if I’m wrong here, but I’ve never seen it before, and I’ve been going to SXSW for a couple of decades), the National Security Agency, Central Intelligence Agency, and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency all had booths along with the National Science Foundation in the corner of the Creative Industries Expo. Also, David Cohen, the deputy director of the CIA, and three other high-level members of the CIA participated in a panel discussion on “Spies Supercharged: Tech and the Future of the CIA.” “We recognize that technology is advancing very, very quickly, the pace of technological change is greater today than it’s ever been, and technology itself is a domain in which we need to compete with our adversaries,” Cohen said. “it’s not just that we need to use technology to do our business we need to understand how our adversaries are using new and disruptive technologies against us, how they are weaponizing technology.” The CIA was at SXSW to “find partners who want to work with us to find people who want to come and work for us,” Cohen said. The CIA focuses on wireless technology like 5G and 6G, quantum computing, artificial intelligence, biotechnology and bioengineering, financial technology, and advanced power like the next lithium-ion battery. I also learned that the CIA puts spy gear into mascara tubes, and now I’ll never look at my makeup the same way again. At the same conference, Chelsea Manning, a former intelligence analyst who leaked classified documents to WikiLeaks and went to prison for violating the espionage act, spoke on the need for more privacy and data protection. She said it’s not just governments monitoring communications; corporations increasingly use sophisticated surveillance and tracking technology to learn as much about their consumers as possible.

4. This is definitely not your father’s Buick or even my old Pontiac Firebird, for that matter. Autonomous vehicles are on the streets today, and more are set to come along with more electric vehicles. Cruise is an autonomous vehicle company of which General Motors owns 80 percent. Kyle Vogt, Cruise CEO, and Mary Barra, GM’s Chair and CEO, spoke with Emily Chang, a Bloomberg reporter, at SXSW in a featured session titled “Self-Driving Cars: From Science Fiction to Scale.” Vogt discussed how Cruise operates a “robotaxi” service in San Francisco and is scaling up its testing operations in Austin and Phoenix. The technology has moved from a science-fiction problem to an execution and scaling problem, Vogt said. Barra believes that AVs are the future of transportation and that they are an essential part of General Motors’ future. Vogt noted that AVs provide increased safety, mobility for those who cannot drive, and the potential for faster and more efficient movement of goods. There are distinct differences between self-driving and driverless cars, and confusion arises when companies market their products as self-driving when they are not fully autonomous, Vogt said. The goal is to have vehicles that work for the driver rather than the driver working for the car, Vogt said. Tesla’s marketing of its “full self-driving” feature confuses consumers, Vogt said. Vogt noted that Cruise had built its cars for dense urban areas, forcing them to solve problems such as construction zones, traffic light outages, and road blockages. He said the company had solved most of the technical and scientific risks. The need now is for robust infrastructure and software systems to operate large fleets of electric vehicles and balance supply and demand across the network, Vogt said. Cruise can expand into more towns and cities as more vehicles are manufactured, including the new “origin” vehicle. Vogt noted that its transformational design breaks away from the traditional car shape built around the driver. He also expressed concern about the U.S.’s approach to AV development and regulations compared to China, which is building infrastructure and incentivizing development. He suggests that the U.S. could be at risk of seeding leadership in AV automotive manufacturing. Overall, the automotive industry is transforming, with GM planning to have all of its light-duty vehicles electric by 2035, Barra said.

5. If the HAL and AI reference didn’t freak you out enough, then you need to know about brain implants. Brain-Computer Interfaces are being used with paralyzed patients today to restore some motor functions and regain independence. In a panel titled “Hello World: Brain-Computer Interfaces at Scale,” Tom Oxley, CEO of Synchron is focused on implantable BCI devices, which he called a neuro-prosthesis. Max Hodak, CEO of Science, who previously worked at Neuralink, also focuses on brain interface development and restoring vision. Synchron offers a different approach, which involves using technology that delivers electrode senses of stimulation into the brain using the blood vessels rather than requiring the removal of the skull to implant electrodes directly into the brain. Technological advancements that have made BCI possible include the miniaturization of electronics and wireless communications. But challenges still need to be addressed, such as ensuring lower power usage and immune barriers. The panelists also talked about the potential role of AI in BCI technology, with many current user interfaces being mediated by AI.  AI will likely play a role in the suite of tools enabling people to use BCI devices. In closing comments, Oxley with Synchron said he expects to have widespread commercial adoption of its BCI technology in the next three to five years. It is currently conducting clinical trials in the U.S. and enrolling patients.

Sponsored Post:

GovExec, the market-leading sales and marketing intelligence company for government leaders and contractors, announced Friday their upcoming Austin event in partnership with VMware (NYSE: VMW), the leading multi-cloud services provider for all apps, enabling digital innovation with enterprise control.

As companies continue to scale, support a hybrid workforce, and need secure flexibility for their operations, cloud technologies become more central to the future of business. At In Focus: Public Sector attendees will hear from government and industry leaders who will explore their current conditions and the importance of secure cloud technology to serve their current and future needs.

EVENT DETAILS

What: VMware Explore In Focus: Public Sector

When: April 5, 2023, from 9 am – 1:30 pm CT

Where: The Bullock Museum, 1800 Congress Ave., Austin, TX 78701

Speakers include:

• Amanda Blevins, Vice President and Chief Technology Officer for the Americas, VMware
• Dr. Brian Gardner, Chief Information Security Officer, City of Dallas
• Nassos Galiopoulos, Chief Technology Officer and Deputy Chief Information Officer, University of Texas at San Antonio
• Mark Silis, Chief Technology Officer, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• Abdul Subhanis, Civilian Aide to the Secretary of the Army

“We’re really excited to bring together such a strong group of public sector IT leaders — especially in one of the top American tech hubs,” said George Jackson, Vice President of Events at GovExec. This event will be fun, informative, and fast-paced. It’s a must-attend for anyone interested in cloud systems.”

To learn more about or register for the event, please click here.

About GovExec:

GovExec’s data and insights set the standard for depth, accuracy, and impact for government leaders and contractors. GovExec provides data-driven strategic sales and marketing intelligence solutions that accelerate revenue growth to fuel market success. The platform is powered by the largest and most sophisticated database in the public sector, reaching over 3.3 million government influencers each month.

The Association of Computing Machinery (ACM) has awarded the 2022 ACM A.M. Turing Award to Bob Metcalfe, recognizing his contributions to Ethernet’s invention, standardization, and commercialization.

This award, often called the “Nobel Prize of Computing,” is named after Alan M. Turing, the British mathematician who laid the foundations of computing. It carries a $1 million prize with financial support from Google.

Metcalfe, an Emeritus Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin and a research affiliate in computational engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Computer Science & Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, invented Ethernet in 1973 while working as a computer scientist at the Palo Alto Research Center. He drew on ideas from ARPAnet, particularly packet switching, and an idea from the University of Hawaii: Aloha Network, a method for sharing a communication channel.

With the help of David Boggs, a co-inventor of Ethernet, Metcalfe built a 100-node PARC Ethernet, which was replicated within Xerox to create a corporate internet. Metcalfe left Xerox and founded 3Com in 1979, raising venture capital in 1981. The company shipped its first big product, Ethernet for the IBM personal computer, in 1982 and went public in 1984.

Today, Ethernet is the main conduit of wired network communications worldwide, with data rates ranging from 10 Mbps to 400 Gbps, and emerging technologies with 800 Gbps and 1.6 Tbps. Ethernet has become an enormous market, with revenue from Ethernet switches alone exceeding $30 billion in 2021, according to the International Data Corporation.

Metcalfe’s original design ideas have enabled the bandwidth of Ethernet to grow dramatically, making it possible for every computer to be networked. Ethernet remains the staple data communication mode, particularly when prioritizing security and reliability.

Metcalfe has received numerous honors for his work, including the National Medal of Technology, IEEE Medal of Honor, Marconi Prize, Japan Computer & Communications Prize, ACM Grace Murray Hopper Award, and IEEE Alexander Graham Bell Medal. He is also a Fellow of the US National Academy of Engineering, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the National Inventors, Consumer Electronics, and Internet Hall of Fame.

The ACM President, Yannis Ioannidis, said, “Ethernet has been the dominant way of connecting computers to other devices, to each other, and to the Internet. It is rare to see a technology scale from its origins to today’s multigigabit-per-second capacity. Even with the advent of WiFi, Ethernet remains the staple mode of data communication, especially when security and reliability are prioritized. It is especially fitting to recognize such an impactful invention during its 50th anniversary year.”

Jeff Dean, Google Senior Fellow and SVP of Google Research and AI added, “Ethernet is the foundational technology of the Internet, which supports over 5 billion users and enables much of modern life. Today, with an estimated 7 billion ports around the globe, Ethernet is so ubiquitous that we take it for granted. It’s easy to forget that our interconnected world would not be the same without Bob Metcalfe’s invention and his enduring vision that every computer must be networked.”

Metcalfe will receive the ACM A.M. Turing Award at the annual ACM Awards Banquet, which will be held on June 10 at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco.

By Laura Kobylecky, Special Contribution to Silicon Hills News

During SXSW 2023, The Courtyard on 4th Street was transformed into an official SXSW venue that hosted various events focusing on British innovation, culture, and music. One of these events brought Andy Burnham, Mayor of Greater Manchester, to the stage to talk about what’s happening in Manchester.

Burnham made connections between the growth and innovation patterns in Manchester and Austin.  I also spoke with a citizen of Manchester to get their perspective and watched a performance from a Manchester band at an SXSW show.

I sat down with Burnham, Mayor of Greater Manchester, to talk further about this connection.  Burnham explained, “The cities are so similar, to be honest.” After “coming to Austin for the first time in 2018 to go to South By,” he was “immediately struck by the similarities: a fast-growing city, a young city, a music city.”

He was also impressed by Austin FC, a football club that was founded in 2018, saying that “he loved it.” He described Manchester as “an old football city” and said, “There’s not much about English football that I don’t know.” This adds a particular layer of depth to his emphatic statement, ” They’ve built something new, something exciting… it’s got all the right kind of values built into it.” He believes that the “new fan culture” being built in Austin is something that “England will start to look to.”

He connects Manchester’s “passion” for football and live music culture with the culture of Manchester, stating that it’s “Something about the working class roots of Manchester. Working people have hard lives, and they needed something on the weekend.”

He explains, “Manchester is like Austin; we have an ecosystem of smaller venues.” Like Austin, these venues receive support from “lots of people who go and watch the new bands that are open-minded about music.” According to Burnham, “you go out any night of the week in Manchester, and you’ll find a few hundred people watching a new band.”

Burnham talks about the historical connections between Manchester, Austin, and SXSW. He said that “South By’s founders were regularly in Manchester in that period in the 90s and the early 2000s” and believes they were inspired by Manchester’s conference called “In the City,” which he describes as “similar” to SXSW.  Burnham describes this as something of a crossover and “not just by chance” but rather a sort of “cross-fertilization.”

Manchester is also concerned about some of the same issues as Austin. Affordability threatens the scene’s survival in both Austin and Manchester. Burnham believes that Manchester has “got a worry actually” because it remains “a working-class city,” but some of the working class may not be part of the music scene.

He states, “These days if you want to make it in the music industry, you’ve got to have money or be from a family that has money because it’s getting much harder to break through.” He thinks this is something that “should worry us all… because sometimes it’s those young people who come from those circumstances who become sort of the biggest personality, the character, and if that’s lost, then music is much the poorer for it.”

He also discusses “the risk” of Manchester perceiving “to trade on past glories: The Smiths, The Stone Roses, Happy Mondays, Oasis, New Order, Joy Division.” This can lead to situations where Burnham believes “we’ve kind of looked back too much, and we need to look forward more.”

Burnham’s more personal contribution to this is “a new initiative called Mayors Artist of the Month.” At “the last week of every month,” he has an open application, and from this, he chooses the “’ artist of the month,’ and they get airtime on the radio.” He says, “I promise you, I go out running, and then I listen to them all.”

Another similarity between Austin and Manchester is that Manchester will launch its own “new global music conference,” according to Burnham. He describes it as “not meant to be a rival to South By,” but he does draw comparisons between the two. This conference, he claims, “is about a forum for debate and for resolution of some of these issues in the industry.” He sees it as something that “counterbalances South by in many ways,” including the timing. Beyond the Music will take place in October.

On Saturday, March 18th, I returned to The Courtyard for the British Music Embassy. I spoke to Rob Brown, managing partner at a PR agency in Manchester’s MediaCityUK , to see how a non-government official feels about the Manchester/Austin connection. Brown has spent time in both Austin and Manchester and sees a kinship between the cities, saying that “they’re both boom cities.”

He explains, “you can see in the skyline of both cities they’ve changed immeasurably over the last ten years.” Brown says that skyscrapers may be typical in the US, “it’s quite unusual in the UK; it’s only really London and Manchester that have tall buildings.”

He also sees a cultural connection between the cities: “they’re both very vibrant music capitals.” Even though “Austin has more live venues than Manchester,” Brown still believes “you can see a great band every night of the week in Manchester.”

Brown is excited to be here at SXSW. He’s a passionate music fan, so enthusiastic that he’s already twice seen “The Golden Dregs,” a UK rock band.  This is his 10th SXSW, and he’s already planning to come back again next year.

On Friday, March 17th, I saw Ist Ist, a Manchester-based band, play at The Velveeta Room, an official SXSW venue. They played a show full of post-punk energy with tones that ranged from heavy rock to mellow emotionality. The lead singer, Adam Houghton, informed the audience that this band is from Manchester.

Manchester culture has made a connection with Austin at SXSW.

At South by Southwest, ZenBusiness hosted a talk on entrepreneurship with Billionaire Mark Cuban and U.S. Small Business Administrator Isabella Casillas Guzman, the highest-ranking Latina in a government office.

Austin-based ZenBusiness, a tech platform that makes it easy for anybody to start and run their own business, has helped form about 500,000 small businesses since its founding in 2015, said Michael Fanuele, ZenBusiness senior vice president, who moderated the discussion.

“Our purpose is unleashing the entrepreneur in everybody,” he said.

To start off, Fanuele asked SBA Administrator Guzman and Cuban about their first entrepreneurship experiences.

Guzman recounted how she grew up as the daughter of a small business owner.

“My dad bought his first veterinary hospital when I was one year old in East Los Angeles and grew it to chain of five veterinary hospitals,” Guzman said.

She spent time in his office and saw firsthand her dad’s passion for serving his customers.

“He worked harder than anybody I knew,” Guzman said.

Her dad also did community vaccination clinics and provided free services to his clients in need, Guzman said. Her dad ingrained in her “this grit and determination to really fulfill whatever it is that I was working on with such passion,” she said.

Guzman turned being seen as an underdog and being underestimated into an advantage. Her mother fought for her to be in gifted and talented programs at school. Her mother fought for her to have a seat at the table.

“It gave me a voice, confidence, and drive to feel that I can expect more,” Guzman said.

In middle school, Cuban was always the kid selling something. In college, he had side hustles, and after that, he joined Mellon Bank in Pittsburgh.

“I got in trouble because I saw an article in a magazine, and I clipped it and sent it to the CEO of the bank, and my boss and his boss and his boss did not like that, so you know, so I was the person that was always stepping out, so I knew at some point that I was going to have to work for myself it was just a question of when I would get there,” Cuban said.

Fanuele asked about the bar Cuban owned and ran at Indiana University.

Cuban ran parties at the Motley’s Pub, the hot bar on campus. When it got shut down, he bought it.

“We opened before I was even 21, but one day, they busted us too, and it was the best thing that ever happened to me because otherwise, I’d still be, not that there’s anything wrong, but I’d be running a bar in Bloomington, Indiana,” Cuban said.

After working at Mellon Bank, Cuban moved to Dallas and founded MicroSolutions, which he eventually sold to CompuServe for $6 million. He also co-founded AudioNet, an online streaming service, and sold it to Yahoo for $5.7 billion in stock. Cuban then bought the Dallas Mavericks National Basketball Association team. And since 2011, Cuban has been a “Shark” on ABC’s Shark Tank. And most recently, Cuban launched Cost Plus Drugs, an online pharmacy providing low-cost drugs.

Fanuele asked Cuban and Guzman to name some characteristics that define entrepreneurs.

“For so many entrepreneurs who are starting businesses today, it’s women and people of color. It’s this drive to try to achieve their version of an American dream of business ownership,” Guzman said. “That drive to create prosperity, to build wealth, to try to enter into spaces that they’ve not been able to before, I think that’s a unique thing about what the face of entrepreneurship looks like today.”

Other traits are grit, determination, flexibility, agility, ability to change, resilience, and vision, Guzman said.

Everyone can be an entrepreneur, Cuban said. “We’re all problem solvers.” The hard part is finding what you are innately good at, Cuban said.

 “Once you find something you could be good at, then it’s just a question of fear,” Cuban said.

Entrepreneurs have to cross that line and commit themselves to do it. But it takes a lot to act on it, Cuban said. Daymond John, CEO of FUBU and another Shark investor on Shark Tank, calls it the power of broke, Cuban said.

“One of the defining elements of an entrepreneur is you can’t be afraid to be broke because you will go broke at some point,” Cuban said.

Cuban recounted living with six guys in a 3-bedroom apartment and sleeping on the floor in his early days.

“You know it was nasty, I had my one towel I stole from motel 6,” Cuban said. “It was really disgusting, but it was the best thing ever because you know the power of broke; you got nothing to lose, and you go for it.”

And when your buddies are stepping over you to go to their job, and you’re starting this company, you realize that there’s only one direction to go, and that’s up, and that’s the power of being an entrepreneur, Cuban said.

“And we all have it, but taking that first step and finding the things we’re good at are the challenges,” Cuban said.

And the fear is warranted because half of all businesses fail in the first five years.

The SBA can provide tools and resources so that that fear can be reduced, Guzman said. She said that the SBA has more than 1,600 resource partners nationwide that focus on financial and capital readiness.

And beyond SBA loans, the federal government awards more than $4 billion yearly for research grants through SBIR.gov, Guzman said.

“Our growth model is to get you funded and also connect you to the largest buyer in the world, which is the federal marketplace,” Guzman said. It’s a $500 billion marketplace, and at least 1/4 of that is spent with small businesses and innovative startups, she said.  

The government grants are non-dilutive cash which means you don’t have to pay it back, Cuban said.

“When you’re starting a business, sweat equity is the best equity,” Cuban said.

Quantum computing startup, Strangeworks has announced the completion of a $24 million round of funding.

The Austin-based company previously raised a $4 million seed stage round, bringing the total funds raised to $28 million.

Strangeworks, founded in 2018, reported Hitachi Ventures led the funding round with investment from IBM, and Raytheon Technologies. It also had follow-on investments from seed-stage investors Lightspeed Venture Partners, Great Point Ventures, and Ecliptic Capital.

Strangeworks, which has 21 employees, said in a news release that the investment allows Strangewowrks to offer a broader range of technologies beyond quantum computing, including quantum-inspired, high-performance computing, and artificial intelligence.

“Today’s announcement represents a significant milestone for Strangeworks,” Will Hurley, known as Whurley, the company’s founder and CEO, said in a news release. “Five years ago, I took the stage at SXSW for our first quantum computing keynote. Since that day, this team has stayed focused on our core mission, continuously beating industry expectations while utilizing only a fraction of the resources compared to the industry. Raising the Series A from these exceptional investors in this challenging economic climate sends a clear message to the market on where enterprise companies are placing their bets in a race to create quantum value.”

The funding comes after Whurley’s keynote speech at the 2023 SXSW conference using all AI-generated text and images.

Hitachi identified quantum computing as a critical technology to advance society and developed its own quantum technologies and quantum-inspired solutions, Norihiro Suzuki, Ph.D. and CTO of Hitachi, said in a news release.

“Quantum computing has the potential to help solve some of the world’s most pressing problems, from fighting climate change to curing fatal diseases that require far greater computational power than is currently available in classical computers,” Suzuki said. “The Strangeworks platform removes barriers to access quantum and quantum-inspired solutions creating customer value today.”

Raytheon’s investment in Strangeworks aligns with its customers’ interests, Dan Ateya, president and managing director at RTX Ventures, the corporate venture capital arm of Raytheon Technologies.

“We believe Strangeworks’ platform and their ability to make quantum and high-performance computing more accessible can support a wide range of applications in the aerospace, defense, and commercial sectors.”

‘Quantum computing is here, but exploiting its advantages requires rare know-how and lots of capital,”  Ray Lane, managing partner of GreatPoint Ventures, based in San Francisco, said in a statement. “Strangeworks democratizes quantum computing by opening proprietary platforms to consumption-based usage, and this is how large tech markets are unleashed.”

By Laura Kobylecky, Special Contribution to Silicon Hills News

PentoPix won the 2023 SXSW Pitch Awards in the “Entertainment, Media & Content” category. PentoPix also won the “Best In Show” award at this competition.  PentoPix uses AI-assisted technology to transform text into 3D animations.

SXSW Pitch showcased innovators and tech industry pioneers, from “indie tech companies to trailblazing startups” (1). The event featured 40 interactive tech companies in 8 different categories. The startups pitched in front of a panel of judges.  

I sat down with Volha Paulovich, Co-Founder & COO of PentoPix, to talk about her experience at the Pitch Awards. When asked for the shortest summary of her company, a demonstration of her freshly-honed pitching skills, she stated, “PentoPix is an AI-assisted platform that brings creativity and efficiency together by converting scripts into 3D animated videos for storyboarding and pre-production.”

She was very excited about winning the Best in Show Award at SXSW Pitch and said, “It’s surreal; I haven’t processed it. It’s the best outcome we could have expected. And in startups, you never expect the best outcome to happen.”

Paulovich found the SXSW Pitch awards to be a unique experience. She explained, “I pitch almost every day …I didn’t really think about it much, and then coaching started, and we shook things up completely, and it was great because it kind of never happens, and I’m really glad that we did.”

The process of SXSW Pitch involved some hands-on training. Paulovich described the process “Every startup gets a coach we get to meet a few times.” There are a required number of meetings “we have a minimum bar of, I think, two times, but you can do more… I did more, for sure…probably four. The experience also included a coach who “can guide you through the process of what it’s like on the day or how to structure your pitch better, leave comments about slides, how to prepare for Q & A.

Paulovich compared the experience to that of an athlete and spoke highly of her coach, referring to them as “absolutely amazing” and the overall experience as “something new and different.”

The SXSW Pitch experience was unique in the startup world, according to Paulovich “And it’s a level of support that you rarely get in startups, especially when it comes to the pitch.”  The pitch experience normally means pitching “to an audience of investors or potential users.” For these early-stage startups, “it’s kind of their job to find why your startup won’t work,” meaning that “you don’t really get to hear the honest feedback because everyone is so critical.” The SXSW experience means having a coach with “a completely fresh eye on you,” and Paulovich described this added value as “amazing.”

When asked more about what she learned from the SXSW Pitch experience, Paulovich described how she and her team “started tailoring things towards people we are meeting, and it just gave us this understanding.”  She reflected, “Always there are people who are not a match, and it’s okay. We are not a gold coin so everyone loves you.”

She emphasized the value of targeting a pitch, stating that “there are funds that invest in specific categories, everyone has investment criteria, and it’s okay when you don’t match. It’s not the end of the world; we’ve got to keep pushing, and that’s great to understand.” This wisdom came from “the exposure to so many different walks of life and so many different startups, to so many different investors.”

Winning this award had a meaningful effect on Paulovich and her company. She says, “Now, since we won, we think bigger, like, a much bigger scale.” The SXSW Pitch award is, according to Paulovich, “the top of the top.” This award inspired her team with a vision that “we are onto something, we are doing great things, not that I didn’t believe it before, but now we have this external validation.”

The external validation led to some more immediate changes. Paulovich explains, “to be honest, I was going to take a holiday after South By, and now, I don’t feel like doing that anymore.” The encouragement from this experience inspired the feeling that “It’s time to push and get out there and continue all the conversations we started, connect to all the people we met, and do more.”

The motivation here came from more than just winning the award. Paulovich found being in Austin for SXSW to be uplifting in many ways, saying that “in general, just being here in Austin, it gives that level of motivation and inspiration.” It makes people believe that “we can do it. We will achieve all these great things and milestones in the future,” and this “kind of fights all the mental health issues and all the negativity that may be involved in building a startup.”

The SXSW experience seems to have inspired Volha Paulovich, Co-Founder and COO of PentoPix and winner of the Best in Show Award at SXSW Pitch, and perhaps this inspiration will be shared by others.

Five years ago, Will Hurley launched his quantum computing company, Strangeworks, on the main stage at South by Southwest.

On Wednesday morning, he returned to SXSW to present the power of quantum computing and artificial intelligence to solve the world’s biggest problems and change how everyone works and lives.

“I think there’s a lot of dystopian fears out there; I think we should be talking about the utopian stuff,” Hurley, known as Whurley, said.

He spoke on “QuantumAI: Why your future depends on the convergence of Quantum Computing & Artificial Intelligence” to a packed ballroom of about 600 people. Other people were turned away at the door when the room filled to capacity.

During his presentation, Whurley spoke from a teleprompter with his speech on a handheld iPad.

He spoke on “how quantum computing and artificial intelligence are two of the most rapidly advancing, controversial, and debated fields in technology today.” Austin-based Strangeworks develops quantum computing software and has 21 employees. The company has raised $4 million in seed-stage funding.

“The convergence of these two technologies will play a significant role in shaping the future of our species and the world as we know it,” according to Whurley.

Throughout his presentation, he hinted that he was doing something different. And at the end, he revealed that everything he said was created with ChatGPT 4, the conversational artificial intelligent agent created by OpenAI. He said he came up with the idea when he submitted the teaser for the talk on the SXSW programming site. Then he used ChatGPT to come up with a presentation outline. And a day ago, he created the entire presentation with ChatGPT and AI-generated images. He re-did the presentation when the latest version of the software was introduced yesterday.

All of the images on the slides were created with AI. And a magazine, “Schrody Cat,” handed out to attendees, was created in 3 hours. “Everything written, seen or printed in this book has been co-created with AI,” according to a statement on the publication.

At the beginning of his presentation, he hinted that he was doing something different and encouraged the audience to take pictures because he would tell them about them at the end of the presentation.

He started by explaining quantum computing, a technology that uses quantum mechanics to solve problems too complex for classical computers.

Quantum computing massively speeds up computer power and can lead to improvements in drug discovery by a lot, Whurley said. He said it could also lead to more efficient batteries and fix environmental problems.

Quantum computing has many applications in cryptography, weather forecasting, and optimization of train schedules and supply chains.  

Quantum-AI technology can also have a profound social impact.

“We are building technologies that could get out of our control,” Whurley said.

The fear is of creating a machine like the T-1000, a shapeshifting android Terminator assassin featured in the movie “Terminator 2: Judgment Day.”

The fear is the robots will kill us or make people their pets, he said. The technology could also lead to income inequality and economic upheaval, Whurley said.

But it can also lead to social and economic progress, Whurley said. Monitoring banking systems in real time can lead to greater accountability in financial systems. It can also lead to improved technologies for sustainable energy. It can lead to higher productivity with autonomous robots and drones for agriculture and manufacturing, and as Whurley predicted, 100 percent unemployment by 2060.

At the end of his presentation, Whurley also said that he stopped blogging on March 13th, 2018, and that his website is now filled with hundreds of articles that were AI-generated while he was on stage.

At Whurley’s book signing following his presentation, Hugh Forrest, Co-president of SXSW and Chief of Programming, was nearby. When asked about what he thought of Whurley’s presentation done exclusively with AI-generated content and images, he said he didn’t see it. But he had heard it was a successful event. But he doesn’t think technology will replace human creativity anytime soon.

“I think Whurley’s middle name is interesting and eccentric, it’s part of his brand, and it has served him well,” Forrest said.

In 2030 when SXSW meets, everyone will understand better how to implement AI robots as virtual assistants, Forrest said.

So much of SXSW is built on creativity, human creativity, and imagination, that’s what makes SXSW, and that’s not going away, he said.

“We will have more assistance from more machines, more software, more hardware in the future,” Forrest said.

Colossal is on track to produce a woolly mammoth by 2028, said Ben Lamm, the company’s CEO, and Co-founder.

“I think we’re on the path for that,” Lamm said during a discussion on Colossal’s De-Extinction Mission at South by Southwest Tuesday afternoon. TechCrunch’s Managing Editor Darrell Etherington interviewed Lamm in Salon H of the Hilton Austin Downtown.

Colossal Co-Founder George Church is a Harvard geneticist who is spearheading the team of 40 scientists and researchers to bring the woolly mammoth back to life.

Lamm said the gestation period for a woolly mammoth is 22 months and can’t be sped up. The company is using Asian elephants to carry the baby mammoth to term. It also has built some artificial wombs to grow woolly mammoths in the lab. Some of the other projects Colossal’s working on, like the Tasmanian Tiger, or Thylacine, or the Dodo bird, might be brought to life sooner than the woolly mammoth because they have shorter gestation periods, Lamm said. Thylacine has a gestation period of less than a month.

Colossal, founded in September of 2021, is one of Texas’ unicorn companies and a moonshot company tackling big projects like bringing the woolly mammoth back from extinction along with the Tasmanian tiger and the Dodo, a bird species extinct since 1662. The synthetic biology company has raised $225 million and spun out Form Bio, a software platform, which raised a $30 million Series A round.

Colossal has 90 employees and 40 external collaborators and labs in Austin, Dallas, Boston, and Melbourne, Australia.

“Our goal is every animal we work on we want to reintroduce back into their natural habitat,” Lamm said.

Colossal has been working with Alaska natives and conservationists about introducing the woolly mammoth back to Alaska. It is also in talks with people in Canada, Lamm said.

There are 54 mammoth genomes, and Colossal is working with the University of Alaska to re-introduce Alaskan mammoths, Lamm said. Colossal has agreed to provide 200 mammoths, he said.

“That re-wilding process has to be very thoughtfully done,” Lamm said. “We are looking for people to be collaborators in it.”

Colossal is being transparent and is focused on educating the public, which is essential when doing something this big, Lamm said.

Colossal’s goal is to bring keystone species back to the environment they were removed from, Lamm said.

Reintroducing the extinct species will benefit the whole ecosystem, Lamm said. He mentioned the successful reintroduction of Grey wolves into Yellowstone National Park. The wolves had been absent from the parkland for decades when the park brought them back in 1995. Lamm said it had been one of the most successful reintroductions of a species to an environment.

Linchpin for the ecosystem

Colossal focuses on linchpin species that are essential for the ecosystem, with the animals going mainly extinct because mankind has a history of murdering them, Lamm said.

Lamm said that Colossal has looked at other species, like the Steller sea cow, which has been extinct since 1768 and would benefit kelp forests by bringing it back. But there’s nothing “we can gestate it in,” he said.

“There are certain species we can’t go after,” he said.

Beth Shapiro, Ph.D., Colossal Scientific Advisory Board member, and lead paleogeneticist, is heading up the work on the de-extinction of the Dodo bird and has to create reference genomes. Lamm said it could cost between $6,000 to $25,000 to do bird genomes.

“Before we can do ancient DNA, we have to do DNA for existing species,” Lamm said.

Colossal isn’t trying to create clones. It is creating close proximities to extinct species, Lamm said.

Etherington asked Lamm if he could make a real Pokémon.

“We aren’t ever going to focus on Pokémon,” Lamm said.

Humanity faces more significant climate issues and problems to solve, he said.

“After we solve all the climate issues, we can start getting weird,” Lamm said.

Etherington asked Lamm about how Colossal makes money.

Lamm said he looks at de-extinction as a systems problem and runs Colossal like a software company.

“We look at monetizing all of the technologies that come from it,” Lamm said. He said that Form Bio was its first spin-out company, but it plans to do more.

Colossal has gotten negative feedback, and some people think what it’s trying to do is like Jurassic Park.  Lamm said thoughtful and informed people give Colossal feedback that is critical. He brings them onto the company’s advisory boards to improve their projects.

“I do not think Colossal is the solution to the biodiversity crisis,” Lamm said. “I think we’re bringing attention to the crises.”

Environmentalists and conservationists today are massively undercapitalized. Colossal doesn’t replace existing conservation efforts, Lamm said.  Lamm said that Colossal didn’t take money away from conservation efforts but brought new money into it.

“People still need to support these existing causes,” he said.

In the Q&A at SXSW, Lamm got asked several questions about what happens if things go wrong, and Colossal creates a nightmare situation and deviates from the original genome to create a Jurassic Park situation.

“We are trying to be very thoughtful of narrating it down versus engineering for fun,” Lamm said.

He said Colossal also faces regulatory oversight from the Environmental Protection Agency and others. He said it doesn’t plan to create mammoths for food or build battle mammoths.