New York & AI Industry / WSJ report

New York City-based generative AI companies raised $2.7 billion since the start of 2021, according to PitchBook Data. So far this year, investors have put $200 million through 27 deals into generative AI startups in New York City, compared with $400 million through 35 deals in the category in San Francisco, the data provider said.

Cybersecurity

2023 has seen its fair share of cyber attacks, however there's one attack vector that proves to be more prominent than others - non-human access. With 11 high-profile attacks in 13 months and an ever-growing ungoverned attack surface, non-human identities are the new perimeter, and 2023 is only the beginning.

People always look for the easiest way to get what they want, and this goes for cybercrime as well. Threat actors look for the path of least resistance, and it seems that in 2023 this path was non-user access credentials (API keys, tokens, service accounts and secrets).

CyberArk’s acquisition run got the media attention this week . CEO Matt Cohen told CNBC that machine identity is the new frontier in cybersecurity.  

It’s not the only Israeli player in this field. Oasis Security has developed a veritable Iron Dome of Non Human Identity Management. It has raised $75 m in funding and is poised for major growth.

President Biden

 President Biden is too old to be President? You don’t have to look any further than the Public Relations industry to see many examples of famous PR pros who worked into their 80s.  Harold Burson, David Finn, Herb Rowland and a few other men who taught me the PR business are them . I’m 68 and will continue to “do PR”until I’m no longer able to type. ( or dictate to ChatGPT !

As for Biden - he’ll beat that wannabe dictator and serve a second term . The economy is booming, the market is rising and inflation is abating. American 🇺🇸 voters are starting to feel confident about the economy.  And, this matters more than far right ideologies. 

Unicorns 🦄 RIP 🪦

 Unicorns are dropping dead like flies.  Approximately 3,200 privately backed companies have disappeared in 2023.  The NYT takes a close look 👀 at the collapse of these once high flyers - no pun intended!

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/07/technology/tech-startups-collapse.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

Happy 30th Anniversary Bruni PR

Bruni PR was founded in November 1993 in a penthouse office at 10 E. 23rd, just a block from the Flatiron Building. Those were heady days as Silicon Alley was just taking form.  We dedicated ourselves to this emerging industry and are still in the game - 3 decades later ! 

We’ve had big clients too -  Mellon Financial , Wayfair , Quadrant Biosciences, Bradford Space and others - but have always focused on the “next big thing” .  Today it’s AI & Fintech. 

Our core business has been Media Relations, a specialized area that has seen many changes.  Back in ‘93 we were still sending press releases via fac.  Email was just getting traction. 

Today we reach reporters via X (Twitter) , Facebook and especially LinkedIn.  Back then press lunches were common, but today it’s the Zoom call !

Avride : look 👀 out Waymo & Cruise

 The international division of the autonomous vehicle and delivery robot developer Yandex Self-Driving Group has rebranded as Avride, according to the company’s new website, unveiled on August 4.

The rebranding comes as part of the company’s corporate restructuring, and the new brand is one of the four international businesses to be spun-off from Yandex. 

Avride positions itself as a pioneer of autonomous transportation. The company’s driverless technology has already covered over 10mn miles (16mn km) on public roads and its delivery robots have made over 200,000 deliveries from shops and restaurants to date, according to the site.

As bne IntelliNews reported, Yandex’s Dutch parent company is in the process of divesting a number of its core assets, including all Russia-based assets, with the plan being to retain the international divisions of self-driving cars, cloud computing, data labelling and education technology, enabling these to develop "independently from Russia." 

Apple Vision Pro

 Back in the early’90s I met Jaron Lanier, who funded VPL the first Virtual Reality startup.  His dream of a VR world 🌎 is now reality .  Make no mistake, the new Apple headset is like the car, computer or even the wheel 🛞 in terms of innovation. 

PR & AI

Research from OpenAI and the University of Pennsylvania argued that 80 percent of the US workforce could have at least 10 percent of their tasks affected by the introduction of GPTs, the series of popular large language models made by OpenAI. They also found that around 19 percent of workers will see at least 50 percent of their tasks impacted. GPT exposure is greater for higher-income jobs, they wrote in the study, but spans across almost all industries.

PR was among the industries that will be most affected or “influenced”.

I’ve been experimenting with ChatGPT in writing media pitch letters.  It’s a game changer.  In a few seconds, it composes a pitch letter that normally takes hours to write ✍🏻, edit and redraft.

What surprised me was how ChatGPT focuses on the strengths of the company “story” .  The end results were pitch letters that mirrored my own pitches but actually improved upon them !  

ChatGPT & God

 I asked ChatGPT the following question:

“Is Artificial Intelligence a God?”

Here’s how it answered:

“No, AI (artificial intelligence) is not a god. AI refers to the simulation of human intelligence in machines that are programmed to perform tasks that would normally require human intelligence to complete. While AI has advanced significantly in recent years and can perform many tasks more efficiently than humans, it is still a tool created by humans and is not capable of possessing supernatural abilities or transcending the limits of its programming. Therefore, it does not have the qualities or characteristics that are typically attributed to a god.”

FTX

The FTX debacle was a setback for Fintech but it doesn’t mean the end of blockchain.  Just this week , Goldman Sachs completed a $300m bond offering using blockchain technology. A process that normally takes several days was executed in minutes, saving tons of time & money.

Here’s a fine oped by the Goldman Sachs CEO from the WSJ that elaborates on how important blockchain is for the future of our economy:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/blockchain-is-much-more-than-crypto-david-solomon-goldman-sachs-smart-contracts-11670345993

Old Media Still a Priority

Mainstream Media vs Social Media ? Old media wins !

Check out this new study from O’Dwyer’s newsletter:

 https://www.odwyerpr.com/story/public/18775/2022-11-09/old-media-tops-new-for-professional-services-firms.html

The Fintech Bubble

CB just released their stats for Fintech finding and it’s not pretty . 2021 was the peak of VC funding and we are now in the valley.  

One graph that stood out was this funding chart, included below:

Crypto Meltdown & Terra

The Terra stablecoin meltdown today shows how risky crypto can be in these challenging times. Bitcoin, Eth and other crypto currencies are under pressure as well. Personally, I am more optimistic about Ether. The upcoming Merge and Layer 2 will help generate more usage of Eth as “gas” for Blockchain transactions.  Bitcoin doesn’t have these advantages. 

Quadrant Biosciences Answers Governor’s call for Covid Testing

SYRACUSE, NEW YORK, USA, January 14, 2022 /EINPresswire.com/ -- SUNY Partners with Quadrant Biosciences to Provide Community COVID Testing 

SUNY schools across New York State are partnering with Syracuse-based Quadrant Biosciences to open free COVID testing sites for members of the community. The new sites are open to the public and intended to help address the growing demand for additional COVID testing sites in the county. 

Adults or children who are looking to get tested are encourage to schedule an appointment. Anyone experiencing active COVID symptoms is strongly encouraged to consult their healthcare provider to determine if testing is appropriate or if they need to seek further examination. The Clarifi COVID-19 Saliva test from Quadrant Biosciences is currently the most sensitive saliva test on the market, and can detect all known variants including the Omicron variant.

“We are happy to partner with SUNY to support access to COVID PCR testing as we recognize there is an unmet need in the community for access to testing,” said Rita Romano, President of Quadrant Laboratories, the laboratory division of Quadrant Biosciences. 

AI & The Turing Test

 Artificial intelligence had a huge week . Startups H2O , LandingAI and others raised a record amount of venture capital. But, was it well invested? Most AI companies base their AI on neural programming.  Elon Musk’s startup is called NeuralNet . Yet, few of these companies would pass the famous “Turing Test”.  It sets the bar high by setting “human text” or human like thinking & communicating as the goal . A WSJ Opinion column this week pointed out that fact. 

NY Area Has a Banner Week for startup capital raising

 https://twitter.com/jamesbruni/status/1371920839461994498?s=21

New Day in America 🇺🇸

 BRUNI PR welcomed the defeat of Donald Trump and celebrated the new Biden Administration.  Every sector we work in — from FinTech to Biotech - will benefit from the stimulus package 📦 proposed by President Biden . 

New York Times profiles Ultranauts

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/18/technology/ultranauts-remote-work.html?referringSource=articleShare

Ultranauts/ Advancing Neurodiversity

Can neurodiversity be a competitive advantage for a huge financial institution that manages $35.2 trillion and has “the largest data set in the financial world “ ?

Six months ago, BNY Mellon’s Enterprise Quality Engineering group started an experiment as part of their ambitious “transformation agenda”.

They wanted to know if autistic quality engineers could accelerate the automation of testing and QA of the hundreds of legacy applications being modernized across the bank. 

BNY Mellon hired Ultranauts, an onshore quality engineering startup powered by cognitively diverse teams.

The results are in : BNY Mellon announced this week that they’ll be “doubling down on neurodiversity.”

“Ultranauts’ quality engineers continue to increase our productivity and ensure we are delivering high quality results. Amazingly, we’ve seen a ~250% increase in the number of new test cases we automated” , BNY Mellon CIO Bridget Engle said on Monday.

Send My Bag 💼

Italy 🇮🇹 has just banned hand luggage on flights due to COVID 19 .

The UK 🇬🇧 government is encouraging airline passengers to avoid having airlines handle their bags 💼 and instead use “delivery services”.

The COVID 19 pandemic prodded government officials to issue the travel advisory this week.

Send My Bag, the “Uber of Airline bags”, has seen a hike in business in Italy 🇮🇹 and especially in the UK 🇬🇧 

UK domestic shipments increased by 126%

UK to Spain shipments up by 119%

UK to Portugal up by 58%

UK to UAE up by 100%

Ireland to UK up by 70%

The Northern Ireland based company shipped 250,000 bags last year.
It operates globally and introduced a USA 🇺🇸 service in 2015.

Here’s a clip on the  UK news :

https://www.express.co.uk/travel/articles/1296525/luggage-suitcases-coronavirus-travel-uk-advice-boris-johnson-latest/amp