Word to the wise: Nvidia has a strong competitor now

Investors remain bullish on Nvidia after witnessing its incredible rise. In less than ten years, this company has rewarded stockholders with returns in excess of 2,500%. But the really smart ones know that now there is even a greater opportunity in this space - Nvidia’s competitor in the data center market.

David and Goliath of the AI world: Graphcore outperforms Nvidia

Graphcore has made it clear that it’s going after Nvidia’s fast-growing data center GPU business, claiming that its IPU architecture is better suited for AI applications because it was built from the ground up for “fine-grained parallelism” while also coming with 900 MB of on-board ultra-high-speed RAM, allowing the IPU to hold large AI models inside the memory. The company has also claimed that its M2000 systems provide more performance-per-dollar than Nvidia’s DGX systems.

AI-powered writing assistant now valued at $13B

A $200 million investment round announced by the popular grammar checker Grammarly not only catapulted the company’s value to $13 billion, but turned two of its founders, Max Lytvyn and Alex Schevchenko, into billionaires. The Ukrainian-born entrepreneurs who launched the automated typing assistant in 2009 are now worth at least $4 billion each. Baillie Gifford led the round with participation from funds and accounts managed by BlackRock.

Impossible Foods: record growth and new funding

Impossible Foods’ previous investment rounds included a $500 million round in March 2020, which was also led by Mirae Asset Global Investments, followed by an additional $200 million round in August of 2020 led by Coatue. The leader in the plant-based space was valued at about $4 billion in its last fundraise in 2020. It did not disclose its latest valuation, but it was reported in April 2021 that the California-based company was exploring options for going public at a valuation of $10 billion or more

Wildfires: artificial intelligence to the rescue!

According to H2O.ai, it makes wildfires ideal candidates for AI intervention, and targets its challenge at encouraging developers to make apps that enable that intervention for first responders, local leaders, businesses, and the general public.

Graphcore starts IPO countdown

Graphcore raised $222 million during its latest funding round, valuing the company at $2.8 billion. It was led by the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan as well as investors including Fidelity International and Schroders. Existing Graphcore investors, including Baillie Gifford and Draper Esprit, also joined the round.