This year’s World Economic Forum gathering in Davos marked a distinct shift, extending beyond Meta and Salesforce’s prominent storefront presence on the main thoroughfare. Artificial intelligence profoundly shaped discussions, eclipsing subjects like climate change and global poverty, with CEOs openly expressing their views. Debates included critiques of trade policies, cautionary notes on potential AI market bubbles, and extensive dialogue on the future trajectory of the industry.
Concurrently, in Silicon Valley, AI startup Humans& secured an astounding $480 million seed investment despite lacking a market-ready product, fueled solely by its concept of “social intelligence” AI and a roster of former talent from Anthropic, Google, and xAI.
On the latest episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, and Sean O’Kane delve into the emerging trend of securing massive funding rounds pre-product launch, the dominant discussions from Davos this week, and other significant developments.
Tune into the complete episode for further insights from the week, covering topics such as:
- The implications of Meta’s 10% staff reduction at Reality Labs for the future of the metaverse, and who continues to champion Meta’s VR investments.
- Serve Robotics’ recent acquisition of Diligent, a company deploying delivery robots in healthcare settings.
- Insights into OpenAI’s speculated earbuds and expectations for the AI giant’s inaugural hardware offering.
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