Artificial Intelligence continues to surprise and shock us.
Last week, we saw that AI can be better than us at playing Go. This week, Microsoft’s chatbot TayTweets showed us that machine learning can even produce AI’s that are better at hate speech than we are. Microsoft promptly hit the killswitch on that one.
Whoops, maybe we ought to stick with non-interactive AI for now.
Incidentally, since the beginning of 2016, 39 companies in the Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning spaces have received investment, totalling $175.9 million in deployed capital.
At Index we gather tech coverage into one platform for tech enthusiasts to keep up with the news and access that data. In this series, we fill you in every week on what’s been happening in Tech.
A look at the world
In the past week, Index logged 244 funding events from 28 different countries. The top 10 countries from North America and Europe in terms of number of rounds can be seen below:
North America
This week in North America there were 130 investments made at a total of $1.98 billion in capital deployment. The biggest round hauled in by a startup went to Domo, the US-based data management company company, which took in a sizeable $131 million addition to their Series D. Check out the breakdown in rounds per series below:
Europe
Europe saw 57 funding rounds for a total of $315 million. Munich-based IoT fitness device company eGym scored a $45 million Series C round this week. Below you can see the breakdown of rounds per series for the week.
This week’s must-reads:
Everything Apple announced at its March 2016 event in one handy list [The Next Web]
Smartwatch firm Pebble lays off 25% of its staff [Techcrunch]
Microsoft is investing millions in a $1 billion startup that rejected its acquisition offer [Business Insider]
Google Now lets you block content from publishers you don’t like [The Next Web]
Report: Google is selling Boston Dynamics, possibly to Toyota or Amazon [The Next Web]
WeWork’s second acquisition is Welkio, a digital sign-in system for offices [Techcrunch]
After Verizon breach, 1.5 million customer records put up for sale [Ars Technica]
275,000,000 Android devices at risk from hacking says report [The Next Web]
Tune in next week for another update on the state of tech. If you can’t wait that long, consider signing up to the Index.co newsletter to get the week’s hottest tech news straight in your inbox!
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