Each week, Quartz rounds up product launches, updates, and funding news from artificial intelligence-focused startups and companies.
Here’s what’s going on this week in the ever-evolving AI industry.
ChatGPT’s Advanced Voice Mode and writing update
The OpenAI logo is seen on a mobile phone in front of a computer screen displaying output from ChatGPT. – Illustration: Michael Dwyer (AP)
OpenAI announced this week that it’s starting to roll out Advanced Voice Mode on the web browser version of ChatGPT. Paid users of ChatGPT Plus, Team, Enterprise, and Edu will be able to start a real-time conversation on the ChatGPT website.
The AI startup also announced that it updated its GPT-4o model’s creative writing ability to have “more natural, engaging, and tailored writing.” The updated model can also work better with uploaded files, OpenAI said.
The Allen Institute for AI’s Tülu 3 model family
Display of the Allen Institute for AI’s new model family, Tülu 3. – Image: Allen Institute for AI
The Allen Institute for AI announced its Tülu 3 family of open, fine-tuned models this week. The fine-tuning, or post-training, process refines models to perform specific tasks.
Through Tülu 3, developers and researchers can find open-source data sets, model training recipes, code, and evaluation frameworks. The models range from 8 billion to 70 billion parameters, or the variables a model learns from training data that guide its ability to make predictions, according to Ai2.
Enveda’s $130 million Series C for AI-assisted medicine
Enveda CEO Viswa Colluru – Photo: Viswa Colluru
Enveda, a biotech company that uses AI to turn natural compounds into new medicines, announced an oversubscribed $130 million Series C funding round this week. The round was led by Kinnevik and FPV, and brings Enveda’s total funding to $360 million.
The funding will help the company with advancing its pipeline of ten development drug candidates. Enveda is building an AI-powered platform called a “sequencer” “that combines metabolomics data with machine learning and high-throughput biological experiments to answer two fundamental questions of any natural sample at scale: (1) What are the molecules?, and (2) What do they do?,” the company said.
“Some of the world’s greatest pharmaceutical breakthroughs have been derived from just 0.1% of nature’s chemistry,” Viswa Colluru, chief executive of Enveda, said in a statement. “We developed our platform to rapidly expand access to nature’s chemistry to find therapeutics at roughly four times the speed–and it’s already delivering results in the form of a deep and differentiated pipeline. This funding will help us advance multiple candidates to exciting clinical catalysts in the next year, confirming our guiding vision that life’s chemistry is an excellent source for new medicines.”
Pickle Robot’s $50 million Series B for production robots
A Pickle Robot picking up a 50 pound box. – Photo: Pickle Robot Company
Pickle Robot, which develops robotic automation systems for unloading trucks, announced a $50 million Series B funding round this week. The company, which calls itself a pioneer of physical AI, also announced that six customers have ordered over 30 production robots in the third quarter for deployment in early 2025. Pickle Robot’s physical AI technology combines a vision system with generative AI foundation models trained on millions of real logistics and warehouse operations data.
“Pickle Robot customers are experiencing the value of Physical AI applied to a common logistics process that challenges thousands of operations every day,” AJ Meyer, chief executive and founder of Pickle Robot, said in a statement. “The new funding and our strategic customer relationships enable Pickle to chart the future of supply chain robotics, rapidly expand our core product capabilities, and grow our business to deliver tremendous customer value now and in the future.”
Lightning AI’s $55 million equity investment
Lightning AI CEO William Falcon – Photo: Lightning AI
Lightning AI, the company behind the PyTorch Lightning deep learning framework, announced a $50 million equity investment this week that included Nvidia (NVDA) and J.P. Morgan (JPM).
PyTorch Lightning has received over 160 million downloads since Lightning AI launched a year ago. Lightning AI combines dozens of separate AI development tools on one, multi-cloud platform where developers can build, train, and deploy AI models, and host AI apps securely.
“Building your own AI platform today is like building your own Slack — it’s complex, costly, and not core to your business,” William Falcon, founder and chief executive of Lightning AI, said in a statement. “The value for enterprises lies in their data, domain knowledge, and unique models — not in maintaining AI infrastructure. We have thousands of developers single-handedly training and deploying models at a scale that would have required teams of developers without Lightning.”
Thoughtful AI’s agents for healthcare revenue cycle management
Thoughtful AI’s AI Agents for RCM – Image: Thoughtful AI
Thoughtful AI launched its specialized AI agents for revenue cycle management in healthcare this week. The AI-powered revenue cycle transformation company’s new agents include CODY for coding and notes review, and CAM for claims processing.
“Our team of AI Agents turn RCM from a bottleneck into a powerhouse, using AI and automation to tackle tedious, time-consuming tasks so that healthcare teams can optimize revenue and focus on what matters most – patients,” Alex Zekoff, co-founder and chief executive of Thoughtful AI, said in a statement.
Reforged Labs’ video ad creation platform for gaming
Reforged Labs’ AI ads for mobile game studios. – Image: Reforged Labs
Reforged Labs, an AI-powered video creation service for mobile game studios, launched its AI-powered video ad service this week that it says can deliver tailored, cost-effective ads in less than 24 hours. The startup’s proprietary AI engine was trained with thousands of game ads, Reforged Labs said.
“We want to help level the playing field for game studios with limited resources,” Robert Huynh, chief executive and co-founder of Reforged Labs, said in a statement. “With our full-service creative solution that’s tailored for game marketing, studios can benefit from proven ad templates and AI-driven production and editing, all without lengthy briefs or big budgets.”
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