Former Humane execs secure million valuation after departing AI hardware startup

Former Humane execs secure $25 million valuation after departing AI hardware startup

Published

3 months ago

October 8, 2024

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Two former executives of Humane, the embattled AI hardware startup, are reemerging with a new artificial intelligence software venture that has raised $4 million at a $25 million valuation.

Brooke Hartley Moy and Ken Kocienda, Humane’s former strategic partnerships lead and head of product engineering, respectively, are debuting Infactory, an AI fact-checking search engine. The pair departed Humane in May, weeks after its AI Pin’s lukewarm debut.

Infactory’s tool aims to search any company’s own enterprise database, as well as the open web, in a transparent and explainable way, Kocienda told CNBC. He and Hartley Moy are marketing the startup toward enterprise customers in industries like finance, insurance, SaaS, healthcare services and media.

“It really came down to the opportunity that we saw in the enterprise side of the house,” Hartley Moy, Infactory’s CEO, told CNBC. “Building this kind of product was never going to be a fit at a consumer hardware company.”

When Humane sent the AI Pin to gadget reviewers in April, it was met with a tepid reception, with many calling it untrustworthy and not very useful. But the two’s departure had to do with the business opportunities they saw when working at Humane, Hartley Moy said.

“The reality was this had been brewing for some time, unrelated to the reviews and how that unfolded,” she said.

Humane is now seeking a buyer, and in June, it was in talks with HP and other firms, including more than one telecom company, a source familiar with the matter told CNBC at the time. Last year, Humane raised $100 million in funding from Microsoft, LG’s venture arm and Tiger Global before announcing its device, bringing its funding total to more than $200 million. Backers include OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff.

Hartley Moy worked at Salesforce, Slack and Google before leaving for Humane. There, she focused on software partnerships with cloud providers. Kocienda, Infactory’s CTO, worked at Apple for more than 15 years and was the principal engineer who invented keyboard autocorrect for the original iPhone.

The company’s seed round was led by Bee Partners with participation from Andreessen Horowitz and others. Although the majority of funding came from an institutional investor, Hartley Moy confirmed that Infactory also utilized a small special-purpose vehicle, or SPV, which is a funding type commonly used by AI companies, like Anthropic and Cohere.

A ‘facts-focused’ AI chatbot

Infactory is currently in alpha status, and the team is currently working with design partners and others to incorporate feedback before broadly launching the product later this year, Hartley Moy said.

“There are many, many businesses that are not part of AI-native companies… who want to be participating in this ecosystem,” she said. “Their business requirements are very regimented around accuracy, around trustworthiness, about high-quality answers. The standards for building those applications are just so much higher.”

How Infactory is addressing that with a special method of preparing data in a way that AI models can better and more accurately analyze it, Hartley Moy said.

If, for instance, a doctor has a patient in their office who is on three different medications, and the doctor wants to double-check potential drug interactions before prescribing a fourth medication, they could ask Infactory and it could provide an answer from internal data, citing its sources, Kocienda said.

“That answer has to be right, and that information exists in the data that this company has built up,” he said.

In the age of database, web and mobile applications, the data currently out there is not well-primed for natural language models, Kocienda said. Infactory is focused on using AI to study an enterprise’s data, understand what’s in it semantically and gauge which kinds of questions can be answered based on what’s in the data and refuse to answer when it can’t, rather than make something up, he said. That’s something many AI chatbots struggle with.

For instance, if a customer asked how many three-point shots Shohei Ohtani has made this season, Infactory’s tool may respond that since Ohtani is a baseball player, the question doesn’t make sense.

Google, Microsoft, OpenAI and other companies are at the helm of a generative AI arms race as companies in seemingly every industry rush to add AI-powered chatbots and agents powered by large language models. The market is predicted to top $1 trillion in revenue within a decade.

Many leading chatbots have come under fire for making up inaccurate answers in response to user queries. Almost immediately after Google debuted “AI Overview” in Google Search, for example, public criticism mounted after queries returned nonsensical or inaccurate results within the AI feature, without any way to opt out.

With Infactory, “at no moment is there a black box where a question goes into an LLM and an answer comes out and you don’t know where it came from,” Kocienda said.

WATCH: Former Apple designers launch $700 Humane AI Pin as smartphone replacement

Technology

Tesla launches refreshed Model Y in China to fend off domestic rivals

Published

4 hours ago

January 10, 2025

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Tesla launched a revamped version of its Model Y in China.

Tesla

Tesla on Friday announced a revamped version of its popular Model Y in China, as the U.S. electric car giant looks to fend off challenges from domestic rivals.

The Model Y will start at 263,500 Chinese yuan ($35,935), with deliveries set to begin in March. That is 5.4% more expensive than the starting price of the previous Model Y.

A spokesperson for Tesla China said that the new Model Y is only open for pre-sale in the Chinese market, rather than being launched globally.

Tesla’s Model Y refresh comes after the auto giant this month reported its first ever annual decline in overall deliveries for 2024.

Elon Musk’s electric vehicle firm is facing heightened competition around the world, from startups and traditional carmakers in Europe. In China, the company continues to face an onslaught of rivals from BYD to newer players like Xpeng and Nio.

Jason Low, principal analyst at Canalys, notes that the Tesla Model Y was the best-selling EV in China in 2024 and that the popularity of the car “remains high.” However, he noted that the competition in the sports utility vehicle (SUV) segment with vehicles priced between 250,000 yuan and 350,000 yuan “has been fierce.”

“Tesla must showcase compelling smart features, particularly a unique but well localized cockpit and services ecosystem,” as well as “effective” semi-autonomous driver assistance features “to ensure its competitiveness in the market,” Low added.

Tesla is offering a number of incentives for customers to buy the Model Y including a five-year 0% interest financing plan.

The new Model Y can accelerate from 0 kilometers per hour to 100 kilometers per hour in 4.3 seconds, Tesla said, exceeding the speed capabilities of the previous vehicle. The Model Y Long Range has a further driving range on a single charge versus its predecessor.

Tesla has not introduced a new model since it began delivering the Cybertruck in late 2023, which starts at nearly $80,000.

Investors have been yearning for a new mass-market model to reinvigorate sales. Tesla has previously hinted that that a new affordable model could be launched in the first half of 2025.

Despite Tesla’s headwinds, the company’s stock is up nearly 70% over the last 12 months, partly due to CEO Musk’s close relationship with U.S. President-elect Donald Trump.

Technology

World’s biggest chipmaker TSMC posts record 2024 revenue as AI boost continues

Published

7 hours ago

January 10, 2025

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World's biggest chipmaker TSMC posts record 2024 revenue as AI boost continues

The logo for Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company is displayed on a screen on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange on Sept. 26, 2023.

Brendan Mcdermid | Reuters

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. posted December quarter revenue that topped analyst estimates, as the company continues to get a boost from the AI boom.

The world’s largest chip manufacturer reported fourth-quarter revenue of 868.5 billion New Taiwan dollars ($26.3 billion), according to CNBC calculations, up 38.8% year-on-year.

That beat Refinitiv consensus estimates of 850.1 billion New Taiwan dollars.

For 2024, TSMC’s revenue totaled 2.9 trillion New Taiwan Dollars, its highest annual sales since going public in 1994.

TSMC manufacturers semiconductors for some of the world’s biggest companies, including Apple and Nvidia.

TSMC is seen as the most advanced chipmaker in the world, given its ability to manufacture leading-edge semiconductors. The company has been helped along by the strong demand for AI chips, particularly from Nvidia, as well as ever-improving smartphone semiconductors.

“TSMC has benefited significantly from the strong demand for AI,” Brady Wang, associate director at Counterpoint Research told CNBC.

Wang said “capacity utilization” for TSMC’s 3 nanometer and 5 nanometer processes — the most advanced chips — “has consistently exceeded 100%.”

AI graphics processing units (GPUs), such as those designed by Nvidia, and other artificial intelligence chips are driving this demand, Wang said.

Taiwan-listed shares of TSMC have risen 88% over the last 12 months.

TSMC’s latest sales figures may also give hope to investors that the the demand for artificial intelligence chips and services may continue into 2025.

Foxconn, which assembles Apple’s iPhones, reported its highest-ever fourth quarter revenue this week, as it notched strong demand for AI servers.

Meanwhile, Microsoft this month said that it plans to spend $80 billion in its fiscal year to June on the construction of data centers that can handle artificial intelligence workloads.

CNBC’s Jordan Novet contributed to this report.

Technology

Supreme Court set to hear oral arguments on challenge to TikTok ban

Published

14 hours ago

January 10, 2025

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Supreme Court set to hear oral arguments on challenge to TikTok ban

Tik Tok creators gather before a press conference to voice their opposition to the “Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act,” pending crackdown legislation on TikTok in the House of Representatives, on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., March 12, 2024.

Craig Hudson | Reuters

The Supreme Court on Friday will hear oral arguments in the case involving the future of TikTok in the U.S., which could ban the popular app as soon as next week.

The justices will consider whether the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, the law that targets TikTok’s ban and imposes harsh civil penalties for app “entities” that continue to carry the service after Jan.19, violates the U.S. Constitution’s free speech protections.

It’s unclear when the court will hand down a decision, and if China’s ByteDance continues to refuse to divest TikTok to an American company, it faces a complete ban nationwide.

What will change about the user experience?

The roughly 115 million U.S. TikTok monthly active users could face a range of scenarios depending on when the Supreme Court hands down a decision.

If no word comes before the law takes effect on Jan. 19 and the ban goes through, it’s possible that users would still be able to post or engage with the app if they already have it downloaded. However, those users would likely be unable to update or redownload the app after that date, multiple legal experts said.

Thousands of short-form video creators who generate income from TikTok through ad revenue, paid partnerships, merchandise and more will likely need to transition their businesses to other platforms, like YouTube or Instagram.

“Shutting down TikTok, even for a single day, would be a big deal, not just for people who create content on TikTok, but everyone who shares or views content,” said George Wang, a staff attorney at the Knight First Amendment Institute who helped write the institute’s amicus briefs on the case.

“It sets a really dangerous precedent for how we regulate speech online,” Wang said.

Who supports and opposes the ban?

Dozens of high-profile amicus briefs from organizations, members of Congress and President-elect Donald Trump were filed supporting both the government and ByteDance.

The government, led by Attorney General Merrick Garland, alleges that until ByteDance divests TikTok, the app remains a “powerful tool for espionage” and a “potent weapon for covert influence operations.”

Trump’s brief did not voice support for either side, but it did ask the court to oppose banning the platform and allow him to find a political resolution that allows the service to continue while addressing national security concerns.

The short-form video app played a notable role in both Trump and Democratic nominee Kamala Harris’ presidential campaigns in 2024, and it’s one of the most common news sources for younger voters.

In a September Truth Social post, Trump wrote in all caps Americans who want to save TikTok should vote for him. The post was quoted in his amicus brief.

What comes next?

It’s unclear when the Supreme Court will issue its ruling, but the case’s expedited hearing has some predicting that the court could issue a quick ruling.

The case will have “enormous implications” since TikTok’s user base in the U.S. is so large, said Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of Berkeley Law.

“It’s unprecedented for the government to prohibit platforms for speech, especially one so many people use,” Chemerinsky said. “Ultimately, this is a tension between free speech issues on the one hand and claims of national security on the other.”