Google’s AI Accelerator Startups, Apple’s PixMix & Meta’s Automated Ads

Happy Thursday everyone!

Welcome to AI Weekly Digest 📬 Your essential AI briefing, carefully curated by me, Rubén Colomer, AI Specialist and GP at Next Tier Ventures. Stay ahead of the curve with the latest AI breakthroughs, key funding news, innovative tools, thought-provoking reads, and the best AI job opportunities - it's all here!

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News 🗞️📰

• Meta aims to fully automate ad creation using AI: Meta is rolling out AI tools that generate complete ad creatives—including copy, visuals and targeting specs—based on simple prompts from advertisers, with beta tests showing up to 70% time savings and plans to integrate the system across Facebook, Instagram and its Audience Network.
• Google.org announces 2025 Generative AI Accelerator cohort: Google.org unveiled its latest accelerator supporting 20 nonprofits worldwide using generative AI to tackle challenges—from climate modeling and crisis mapping to accessible education—with $1 million in funding and technical mentorship to scale inclusive, ethical AI solutions.
• How to get the most out of Google’s free AI Studio: Fast Company highlights tips for maximizing Google’s AI Studio—like leveraging prebuilt templates for image, video and code generation, customizing models with branded datasets, and using the integrated prompt debugger to fine-tune outputs for professional-grade results without writing a line of code.
• Apple makes major AI advance with image generation rivaling DALL·E and Midjourney: Apple unveiled “PixMix,” a proprietary diffusion model that matches or exceeds quality of leading image AIs while ensuring on-device inference for privacy, featuring 4K output, style transfer and seamless integration into iOS and macOS design apps.
• Microsoft’s free AI video generator could be Bing’s last chance to take on Google: Microsoft has launched a free AI video generator integrated into Bing’s search interface, aiming to close the gap with Google’s AI offerings by enabling users to create short clips from text prompts; the move underscores Bing’s push to differentiate itself and boost user engagement amid intensifying competition in generative AI.
• ‘We id pay thousands to get rid of email’: Demis Hassabis on his real AI goal: Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis envisions AI that automates routine tasks—like email triage—to free people from administrative burdens, with the ultimate aim of building systems that proactively anticipate users’ needs rather than merely responding to queries.
• Anthropic co-founder on cutting access to Windsurf: ‘It would be odd for us to sell Claude to OpenAI’: Jared Kaplan explained that Anthropic restricted Windsurf’s direct access to its Claude models amid acquisition rumors, stating their focus is on long-term partnerships rather than serving potential buyers like OpenAI, and announced plans to expand compute capacity via a new Amazon cluster.
• Hyundai’s Meta Plant in Georgia Revolutionizes EV Manufacturing Hyundai opened its massive “Meta Plant” in West Point, Georgia—a single, digitally integrated facility that combines electric-vehicle assembly, battery production and advanced robotics, featuring AI-driven process control, digital-twin simulations and flexible manufacturing lines to ramp up new models faster and train a projected 8,000‐strong workforce.
• Hugging Face Unveils Two Open-Source Humanoid Robots AI platform Hugging Face launched HopeJR, a full-size humanoid with 66 degrees of freedom for walking and manipulation (priced ≈ $3 000), and Reachy Mini, a $250–$300 desktop robot for voice and vision AI testing—both open-source to democratize robotics development.
• Meta Plans to Automate 90% of Its Product Risk Assessments Internal documents reveal Meta will deploy an AI system to instantly evaluate privacy, safety and harm risks for up to 90% of new feature launches on Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp—streamlining FDA-style reviews but raising concerns that reduced human oversight may let problematic changes slip through.
• Amazon to Invest $10 B in North Carolina AI Data Centers Amazon announced a $10 billion investment to build multiple AI-optimized data centers in North Carolina over the next decade—creating thousands of construction and operations jobs and securing renewable‐energy commitments to power the new facilities
• NVIDIA’s New Vision-Language Model Tops OCR Benchmarks NVIDIA introduced a vision-language foundation model that achieves state-of-the-art results on multiple OCR leaderboards—demonstrating 15–20% error-rate reductions versus prior bests in text detection and recognition across challenging real-world document datasets.
• OpenAI Hits 3 M Business Users and Rolls Out Workplace AI Tools OpenAI reported 3 million paid business accounts and launched “Workplace” features—integrations for Slack, Microsoft Teams and Google Workspace plus admin controls and enhanced data governance—to challenge Microsoft’s Copilot in the enterprise market.
• Anthropic introduces new Claude Gov models with national security focus: Anthropic launched Claude Gov, custom-tuned large language models designed for classified government workloads, offering enhanced document handling, multilingual intelligence, and cybersecurity analysis capabilities, following collaboration with defense and intelligence customers to meet stringent operational requirements.

Funding 💼💸

• Guardz locks up $56M Series B for enterprise cybersecurity: Fueled by a $56 million injection led by ClearSky and backed by Phoenix Financial, Glilot Capital Partners, SentinelOne, Hanaco Ventures, iAngels and GKFF Ventures, co-founder and CEO Dor Eisner plans to enrich Guardz’s AI-native platform with automated threat hunting and real-time protection—empowering MSPs to defend SMBs at scale.
• Voxel raises $44M Series B to transform workplace safety: NewRoad Capital Partners led the $44 million round (with Eclipse, Rite-Hite, Tokio Marine, MTech, HG Ventures and Whitestone) that CEO Vernon O'Donnell will channel into refining Voxel’s real-time computer-vision models—expanding hazard detection capabilities across industrial settings to prevent accidents before they occur.
• MIND raises $30M Series A to deliver autonomous data loss prevention: Co-founder and CEO Eran Barak will deploy the $30 million from Paladin Capital Group and Crosspoint Capital Partners (joined by Okta Ventures and YL Ventures) to scale MIND’s AI-native DLP platform—automating sensitive-data discovery, classification and blocking across endpoints, SaaS apps and on-prem systems at machine speed.
• AI pioneer Bengio secures $30M for LawZero nonprofit lab: Turing Award winner Yoshua Bengio has launched LawZero with $30 million from Eric Schmidt’s philanthropic arm, Future of Life Institute and Jaan Tallinn—building a safety-by-design AI lab focused on probabilistic reasoning, autonomous peer review of agents and rigorous risk mitigation across the AI lifecycle.
• Treefera secures $30M Series B for first-mile supply chain transparency: Founded by Jonathan Horn and Caroline Grey , the $30 million led by Notion Capital (with Endeit Capital, Albion VC, Triple Point and Twin Path Ventures) will fuel Treefera’s AI-driven data fabric—merging satellite and drone imagery with ESG and land records to deliver real-time first-mile visibility for decarbonization and compliance.
• Aibidia raises $28M Series B to expand AI-powered transfer pricing platform into the US: Finnish tax fintech co-founded by CEO Hannu-Tapani Leppänen closed $28 million in a round led by Activant (alongside DN Capital, FPV and Icebreaker.vc) to scale its AI-driven transfer pricing and cross-border tax compliance solution for enterprises entering the US market.
• Wordsmith AI secures $25M Series A to build its legal engineer ecosystem: Ross McNairn and co-founders Volodymyr Giginiak and Robbie Falkenthal captured $25 million from Index Ventures and Scottish Enterprise to grow Wordsmith AI’s “Legal Enablement Platform,” automating contract workflows and enabling companies to cultivate in-house legal engineers
• Sema4.ai closes $25M Series A extension to accelerate AI agent deployment: With Benchmark and Mayfield Fund leading the $25 million extension (and new capital from Snowflake Ventures, Rocketship VC, MVP Ventures and Cox Enterprises), CEO Rob Bearden will fast-track Sema4.ai’s Work Room and Control Room interfaces for seamless enterprise-scale AI agent orchestration.
• Obvio raises $22M Series A to deliver AI-powered traffic safety solutions: Bain Capital Ventures led the $22 million for co-founders Ali Rehan and Dhruv Maheshwar, enabling Obvio’s solar-powered AI cameras to detect dangerous driving behaviors, cut violations by over 50% and automate citation workflows for municipalities.
• Ciroos raises $21M seed round to bring AI SRE Teammate to operations teams: Ronak Desai emerged from stealth with $21 million led by Energy Impact Partners (alongside strategic angels) to launch Ciroos’s multi-agent AI SRE Teammate—designed by former Cisco, AWS and Gigamon executives to cut incident response times by up to 90% and integrate seamlessly with existing observability and ticketing systems.
• Dataplor secures $20.5M Series B to scale global location intelligence: With F-Prime leading the $20.5 million round (joined by Spark Capital, FFVC, Acronym Venture Capital, Two Lanterns, APA Ventures, dara5 and Alumni Ventures), founders Geoff Michener and Ryan Urabe will supercharge dataplor’s global POI and mobility data platform—delivering monthly refreshed, privacy-compliant foot traffic insights across 350 million locations.
• Labrys Technologies raises $20M Series A to power secure workforce platform: London-based Labrys, co-founded by August L. and Luke W. , captured $20 million led by Plural (with AlbionVC and Superangel) to advance Axiom—a military-grade workforce management platform offering biometric verification, real-time coordination and blockchain-based payments for high-risk operations.
• Thread AI secures $20M Series A to transform enterprise AI workflows: Co-founders Angela McNeal and Mayada Gonimah closed $20 million led by Greycroft (with Index Ventures, Scale Venture Partners, Plug-and-Play, Meritech Capital and Homebrew) to expand Thread AI’s Lemma platform—composable infrastructure connecting AI models, data and automation into secure, scalable workflows.
• Toma secures $17M Series A to revolutionize car dealership operations: A16z’s $17 million lead (joined by Y Combinator, Flex Capital, Scale Angels and Turing.com founders Jonathan Siddharth and Vijay Krishnan ) backs founders Monik Pamecha and Anthony Krivonos as they deploy Toma’s AI voice agents—handling 100% of dealership calls, from service scheduling to parts orders, with seamless human handoffs.
• Vercept raises $16M seed round to automate repetitive tasks on computers: Fifty Years led the $16 million seed round for co-founders Matt Deitke , Ross Girshick , Luca Weihs and Oren Etzioni , joined by Eric Schmidt, Jeff Dean, Kyle Vogt and Arash Ferdowsi—funding Vercept’s Mac app “Vy,” which records user workflows and autonomously executes multi-step tasks via natural-language commands.

M&A 💰

• Qualcomm to acquire Alphawave Semi for $2.4 billion: Qualcomm’s $2.4 billion cash offer for UK-based Alphawave Semi—specialists in high-speed wired connectivity chips—is designed to fast-track its AI-training infrastructure roadmap; the agreement, delivering a 96 % premium over the pre-announcement share price, has been approved by Alphawave’s board and is expected to close in Q1 2026.
• Genpact acquires XponentL Data to accelerate AI-led innovation: By bringing XponentL Data’s AI-powered data engineering and automation expertise in-house, Genpact aims to deepen its analytics and machine-learning solutions across key sectors—financial services, healthcare, and manufacturing—while retaining the entire XponentL team under existing leadership.
• Collibra acquires Raito to enhance data-access governance: Collibra has added Brussels-based Raito’s fine-grained access-control technology to its unified data-and-AI governance suite, enabling enterprises to enforce more precise security and compliance policies across both on-prem and cloud environments.
• AMD acquires Brium to strengthen its AI software ecosystem: The acquisition of stealth-mode Brium—creators of AI-inference-optimization software—allows AMD to optimize machine-learning workloads across its CPUs, GPUs, and custom accelerators, further diversifying its AI-hardware-plus-software stack.
• Nodalview snaps up Flaaash for virtual home staging: With Flaaash’s AI-driven 3D furniture placement tools now integrated into its property-marketing suite, Belgium’s Nodalview will offer real-estate agents automated virtual staging within their 360° digital tours.
• ICARO Media Group expands Latin American footprint via RioVerde OOH deal: By acquiring RioVerde OOH’s digital-screen network in Brazil’s major metros, ICARO Media Group will boost its programmatic‐ad reach and strengthen its out-of-home advertising offerings across Latin America.
• CallMiner acquires Vocalls to boost conversational AI: Vocalls’ NLP-powered call-handling and conversational-analytics platform will be folded into CallMiner’s engagement suite, accelerating deployments of AI-driven agent tools in global contact centers.
• Snowflake integrates Crunchy Data’s enterprise Postgres: The purchase of Crunchy Data enables Snowflake to launch “Snowflake Postgres,” combining transactional Postgres with its AI-optimized Data Cloud to deliver unified analytics and operational workloads on a single platform.
• ABB acquires Bel Products Inc. to bolster enclosures portfolio: ABB Electrification Canada Inc. has absorbed Montreal-based Bel Products’ commercial and industrial enclosures business to expand its North American manufacturing, warehousing, and supply-chain capabilities—terms of the transaction remain undisclosed.
• MindgruveMacarta merges with Levelwing to form a marketing powerhouse: Through its merger with Levelwing, MindgruveMacarta combines performance-marketing expertise and data-tech innovation under one roof, creating one of the fastest-growing independent agencies with a diversified client roster across major industries.

Interesting Reads 💡🤔

• Chipotle CEO on using AI to open a new restaurant every day: Scott Boatwright describes Chipotle’s plan to deploy AI-driven site-selection algorithms—analyzing demographics, traffic and competitor data—to identify ideal locations and accelerate openings to one new restaurant per day, with pilots in ten markets showing 20% faster build cycles.
• 3-Step AI coding workflow for solo founders: Geeky Gadgets outlines a three-stage “vibe coding” process—define clear context, automate routine tasks with Model Control Plugins, and iteratively refine AI outputs—enabling solo developers to generate, test and ship features faster without sacrificing quality.
• Google’s AI shift in travel marketing: disruption is coming fast: Skift reports Google is embedding AI agents into Ads and Analytics to auto-generate personalized travel offers, dynamic creative assets and predictive audience segments, forcing OTAs and hotel chains to overhaul their marketing stacks or risk falling behind in rapid, data-driven customer acquisition.
• AI-powered Visual Studio Code brings deep intelligence to your IDE The new VS Code extension integrates multimodal AI agents for code completion, documentation lookup, and live debugging—letting developers ask natural-language questions, generate boilerplate, and troubleshoot errors right inside their editor.
• 4 tips to boost AI adoption and user confidence at work. Fast Company identifies that successful workplace AI rollouts hinge on transparent communication of benefits, tailored training programs, phased deployments with human oversight, and clear feedback loops to build trust and ensure employees feel empowered rather than threatened.
• Top 10 AI tools for productivity and creativity in 2025. Geeky Gadgets curates a suite of leading AI platforms—from text generators like Claude and ChatGPT to design assistants such as Midjourney and Canva AI—recommending tools for writing, coding, image creation, project management and automated research to supercharge daily workflows.
• DeepSeek r1 review: next-gen AI for advanced reasoning. DeepSeek r1, the latest large-language model from Zhipu AI, demonstrates nine-page “chain of thought” responses, and is benchmarked for tasks requiring deep reasoning, showing significant improvements in logical problem-solving and context retention over previous open-source models.
• When can AI make good decisions? The rise of AI corporate citizens. McKinsey explores how embedding AI “citizens”—with defined roles, accountability and governance—into business processes can accelerate decision-making; it advises clear objective setting, continuous performance monitoring and ethical guardrails as prerequisites for reliable, autonomous AI operations.
• Gemini’s Deep Research button lands in Google Search. Google added a “Deep Research” tab to mobile Search for Gemini subscribers, letting users upload files or web pages and receive detailed, multi-source AI summaries and citations—transforming Search into a personalized research assistant.
• Breaking complexity in banking risk with AI: Wells Fargo’s Nathaniel Bell. Wells Fargo’s Nathaniel Bell discusses on the Emerj podcast how AI agents and predictive models are streamlining risk-operations workflows—automating loan underwriting checks, fraud detection and compliance reporting to reduce latency and improve accuracy.

Startups / Tools 🧰🛠️

• Rillet: An AI-native ERP built by accountants to replace legacy systems like NetSuite, Rillet automates and accelerates financial close processes with intelligent ledger reconciliation, real-time analytics, and streamlined audit trails.
• Cognichip: Pioneering “Artificial Chip Intelligence” (ACI®), Cognichip uses physics-informed foundation models to automate and optimize semiconductor design—reducing effort by up to 75%, speeding time-to-market by 50%, and making high-performance chips accessible to all innovators.
• Creatify: Paste any product link and instantly generate 5–10 ready-to-run, UGC-style video ads using 700+ lifelike AI avatars—then A/B-test variants to drive higher conversion rates with minimal manual effort.
• Samaya AI: A knowledge-discovery platform for domain experts, Samaya deploys specialized AI agents that ingest your proprietary data, run deep semantic searches, summarize findings, and surface actionable insights in a ChatGPT-style interface.
• David AI: Building the foundational audio-data layer for voice and sound applications, David AI collects, curates, and annotates high-fidelity datasets—powering next-gen speech, music, and ambient-sound AI research.
• Greenlite AI: Deploys regulatory-first AI agents that automate up to 95% of KYC, AML, and sanctions screening workflows—embedding in-process compliance checks to help banks and fintechs scale without sacrificing security.
• StreamAlive: Inject polls, word clouds, spinner wheels—and real-time “magic maps” plotting audience locations—into any live stream or webinar via a single chat command, boosting engagement and on-the-fly analytics.
• Headpix.ai: Turn ordinary selfies into 100+ professional-quality headshots (studio, LinkedIn, acting, doctor, male/female portraits) in under two hours—choose styles, backgrounds, and bulk-generate for teams.
• Reid AI: Marketed as your “working copilot,” Reid AI injects task automation, smart suggestions, and data lookups directly into your existing workflows—so you get real-time assistance without context-switching. (official site link; detailed feature info forthcoming)
• Pillar: A Link-in-Bio store and marketing hub that turns a single page into a mini e-commerce site—complete with product listings, checkout, analytics, and social promotions—all powered by AI-driven content and layout optimization. (official site link)
• PlainScribe: Upload audio, video or document files—PlainScribe instantly transcribes, translates into 100+ languages, and summarizes key points using AI summarization models.
• Taplio: Grow your LinkedIn presence with AI-generated post ideas, auto-drafted content, scheduling and analytics—all in one dashboard designed to maximize engagement and follower growth.
• Coval: A fully automated testing platform for AI agents—whether for self-driving, voice assistants, or chatbots—Coval simulates scenarios, injects edge-case inputs, and validates agent behavior at scale.
• Agentuity: Provides a next-gen cloud platform purpose-built to deploy, scale, and evolve autonomous AI agents—seamlessly integrating with existing infrastructure and sidestepping legacy orchestration limits.
• Recraft: A GenAI visual-design suite used by 4 M+ creatives (Amazon, NVIDIA, Salesforce) that enforces brand guidelines, lets you build and share style libraries, and generates on-brand graphics in seconds.
• Coworker.ai: Tackles complex workflows by ingesting context from 40+ enterprise apps—no custom coding needed—letting you ask natural-language questions like “Which invoices are overdue?” or “Summarize last week’s sales calls.”

NTV Highlights 🪩🎉

• I’ll be joining the “Round Table – From Language Model to Business Model: Key Insights for Investing in AI” at the CTO AI Summit on Thursday, June 12, from 12:15 to 12:45 PM. I’ll be on stage alongside Samuel Gil, CFA , Juan Filiberto Martínez Ciller , and Aitor Almendros Moreno —hope to see you there!
• Next Tier Ventures is excited to participate in the 4th Deep Tech Startup Investment Forum, organized by Esade BAN together with Barcelona Activa, UPF, UB, UAB, UPC and UOC. Join us on Friday, June 13 at 9:30 AM at ESADE Campus Pedralbes in Barcelona
• We are actively looking for AI startups At Next Tier Ventures, we are actively looking for the next generation of AI startup founders ready to scale and create meaningful impact. Our investments range between $500K and $2M, accompanied by strategic support to help founders achieve their vision. If you’re building cutting-edge B2B AI solutions let’s connect 👉 http://apply.nexttier.vc