Marc Benioff is going all in on AI agents. The Salesforce chief talked at length during the company's quarterly earnings call Wednesday about his vision for unleashing automated bots in a new product called Agentforce.
Salesforce will demonstrate its AI agents during Dreamforce in San Francisco next month, and Benioff seems to be betting the future on it.
"This year, Dreamforce is really becoming Agentforce," Benioff said on the call.
Unlike Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, who rebranded his company in 2021 to Meta when the so-called metaverse was hot, it doesn't look like Benioff actually intends to rebrand Salesforce or its signature event to mark the strategy shift.
Salesforce is, after all, still focused on selling enterprise software for sales operations and other teams. It's just powered by artificial intelligence more than ever before.
"We now so strongly believe the future isn't about having a sales force or a service force or a marketing force or a commerce force or an analytics force. The future is about also having an agent force," Benioff said.
Full story: Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff: AI agents are ‘singular focus’
Rules and regulations
Elon Musk's xAI is taking heat for using gas-powered turbines in Tennessee without having proper permits, and the energy consumption is causing increased pollution in Memphis, CNBC reported.
OpenAI and Anthropic will open up their models to the government, the Verge reported. The two companies agreed to provide the U.S. AI Safety Institute access to their models before and after they're released. The Biden administration announced the AI Safety Institute in February as a consortium of stakeholders to oversee "the development and deployment of safe and trustworthy artificial intelligence."
Meanwhile, SB 1047 is inching its way towards the governor's desk here in California. On Wednesday, the state Assembly passed the bill, also known as the Safe and Secure Innovation for Frontier Artificial Intelligence Models Act. The bill now goes back to the Senate for a final vote. San Francisco Mayor London Breed voiced her opposition to the proposed law this week, along with three other mayoral candidates: Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin, former Supervisor Mark Farrell and nonprofit executive Daniel Lurie.
The industry is split on its support for SB 1047 but, perhaps predictably, Elon Musk came out in support of the bill. Musk seems to relish anything that might make life more difficult for OpenAI, which he helped start but later split with acrimoniously. Last week, OpenAI reportedly indicated its opposition to the California bill in a letter to its sponsor, state Sen. Scott Weiner. In March 2023, Musk signed an open letter calling for a six-month-long "pause" on developing advanced AI models, which some observers saw as a ploy to play catch-up. Fourteen months later, Musk raised $6 billion for his own AI research organization, xAI.
Another California bill would require AI-generated photos, videos and audio to have watermarks in its metadata. Known as AB 3211, or the California Digital Content Provenance Standards bill, it was introduced by Assemblymember Buffy Wicks, who represents Oakland. OpenAI, Adobe and Microsoft now support the proposed law, TechCrunch reported.
Fresh Faces
OpenAI poached Irina Kofman, a former Meta executive, as its new head of strategic initiatives, Bloomberg News reported. Kofman was a director in Meta's artificial intelligence division.
Funding rounds to know
OpenAI is reportedly looking to raise billions more in funding in a new round led by Thrive Capital that could value the San Francisco company at $100 billion or more. Apple is also reportedly looking to get in on the action, the WSJ reported on Thursday. In June, Apple announced that OpenAI's technology would be integrated into Apple Intelligence.
Full story: OpenAI's valuation to cross $100 billion mark with help from Jared Kushner's younger brother
San Francisco-based generative AI coding startup Magic AI announced on Thursday that it had raised $320 million in fresh funding from a suite of investors including Eric Schmidt, Nat Friedman, Daniel Gross, Elad Gil, Jane Street, Sequoia, Atlassian and CapitalG. The new cash brings the company's total funding to $465 million and comes around six months since Magic announced a $117 million Series B round.
Mountain View-based developer tools startup Codeium, legally known as Exafunction, announced a $150 million Series C round from General Catalyst, Kleiner Perkins and Greenoaks that valued the company at $1.25 billion.
Burlingame startup Butlr raised $38 million in a Series B round led by Foundry Capital. Other investors in the round included Pacific Alliance Venture, GS Futures, DNX Ventures, Ray Stata, Joi Ito, Carrier Ventures and Qualcomm. The company is designing wireless thermal sensors that can track the movements of people in buildings by capturing data from body heat instead of personally identifiable information. Forbes has more details.
Sunnyvale-based Opus Clip has raised $30 million through a Series A round led by Millennium New Horizons, Fast Company reported. The Sunnyvale-based startup uses generative AI to automatically extract smaller clips from longer videos and make them social media ready.
nOps raised $30 million in a Series A round led by Headlight Partners, TechCrunch reported. The startup appears to be based in San Francisco and South Lake Tahoe and is developing budget optimization software for AWS customers.
San Francisco startup Bland AI raised $16 million in a Series A round led by Scale Venture Partners, Venture Beat reported. The company is developing conversational, and controversial, bots for call centers that mimic human voices.
Agency AI, legally known as Staf, Inc., raised $2.6 million in preseed funding to build observability tools for AI agents, TechCrunch reported.
Must reads
This founder is using AI and robots to save lumber from landfill -San Francisco Business Times
OpenAI Races to Launch ‘Strawberry’ Reasoning AI to Boost Chatbot Business -The Information
The hidden reason AI costs are soaring—and it’s not because Nvidia chips are more expensive -Fortune
New Washington Post AI tool sifts massive data sets -Axios
Using fear to sell AI is a bad idea -FT
Is That Voice Real or AI? This Startup Says It Can Tell -Bloomberg News
Gannett is shuttering site accused of publishing AI product reviews -The Verge
Nvidia partner says it can cut data center energy use by 50% as AI boom strains power grid -CNBC
Ex-Googlers Discover That Startups Are Hard -The Information
After a decade of free Alexa, Amazon now wants you to pay -Washington Post
These New AI Bots Will Do Just About Anything for You -WSJ
Why AI can't spell 'strawberry' -TechCrunch
