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What the expected Arm IPO could mean for AI
The semiconductor giant Arm is getting ready to hold a public offering in what will likely be 2023’s biggest IPO. In a new filing, the company says it’s looking to raise $4.87 billion from selling just 9.8% of its shares on the Nasdaq exchange. If all goes well, Arm could end up with a valuation of $52 billion. Arm was a public company until 2016 when SoftBank took it off the market for $32 billion.
Much of the excitement around the IPO is due to the market’s current interest in AI. Many investors are looking for investment opportunities with companies (other than Nvidia) that could directly profit from the AI boom. Arm likely won’t pose a threat to Nvidia’s dominance providing the A100 and H100 chips that are widely used within data centers to train large AI models. Rather, Arm’s AI play will be in designing chips that run smaller or compressed versions of AI models within devices (sensor modules or smart speakers, perhaps), Pitchbook emerging tech analyst Brendan Burke tells me. But institutional investors don’t seem convinced that the AI boom will quickly expand the edge chip market. Softbank, in fact, adjusted down a $64 billion valuation of Arm from earlier this year, Burke points out. “The lowered price range relative to the initial target shows that investors are exercising caution in assigning expectations for AI growth,” he says.
This month: Fast Company profiles AI’s 20 best and brightest
Fast Company writers have been hard at work this summer assembling the inaugural AI 20 list, spotlighting the most influential people building, designing, regulating, and litigating AI. The editorial package kicked off on Monday, with reporter Issie Lapowsky’s profile of Meta’s outspoken chief AI research scientist, Yann LeCun. Here’s an excerpt:
To LeCun, Meta’s about-face [its decision to open-source its Llama 2 large language model] was a welcome change: Expanding access to this technology and letting other people build stuff on top of it, is, he argues, the only way to ensure that it’s not ultimately controlled by a small group of Silicon Valley engineers. “Imagine the future when everyone uses some sort of chatbot as their main interface to the digital realm. You don’t go to Google. You don’t go to Facebook. . . . You just talk to your virtual assistant,” LeCun says. “You want that AI system to be open source and to be transparent because there’s going to be a lot riding on it.”
Read the whole profile here.
Survey: University AI experts favor a federal AI agency
University computer science professors and researchers aren’t thinking as much about AI wiping out mankind as they are about getting a regulatory grip on the booming technology. A new survey conducted by Axios and Syracuse University asked 213 experts from 65 top computer science programs what entity would be best for regulating AI. The results show that 37% favor the establishment of a new government agency to oversee and create guardrails around tech companies developing potentially harmful models. Another 22% said a global organization or treaty is needed. And while 16% said Congress could be relied upon to pass effective regulation, only 3% believed the tech industry could regulate itself.
The survey results come days before Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is set to host a slew of tech leaders and experts at an AI forum on September 13. The guest list is a who’s who of industry titans: OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, X CEO Elon Musk, Inflection AI founder Mustafa Suleyman, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, and a host of others. All will be traveling to D.C. to discuss approaches to regulating AI.
More AI coverage from Fast Company:
- Zoom’s new AI tool will tell you if you’re bad at meetings
- Match Group releases its guiding principles for integrating AI into its dating apps
- Refik Anadol just turned the Las Vegas Sphere into the world’s largest AI artwork
- This is how we protect the art of film and TV from AI
From around the web:
- What OpenAI really wants (Wired)
- Despite cheating fears, schools repeal ChatGPT bans (New York Times)
- The AI market will be worth $600 billion, Nvidia exec says (Yahoo Finance)
- Prosecutors in all 50 states urge Congress fight AI child sexual abuse images (Associated Press)
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