NEWS YOU CAN’T MISS

India's AI Voice Bot Revolution: Reaching the Next Billion

Several Indian startups are developing AI-powered voice bots that interact with users in their native languages. India is known for its remarkable linguistic diversity of 22 official languages.

These AI bots are priced as low as 1 rupee (about $0.01) per minute to capture the mass market.

Here are some examples:

• CoRover's "Ask Disha" bot books train tickets and completes payments for Indian Railways via voice.

• Gnani AI handles millions of voice conversations daily for major banks, insurers, and Tata Motors.

• Sarvam AI's voice bots work with Sri Mandir devotional app (10M+ downloads) to guide users on temple rituals.

Sarvam AI, described as India’s OpenAI, counts Silicon Valley billionaire Vinod Khosla as an investor who said, “These voice bots have the potential to reach a billion people.”

Why it matters:

• Voice interaction overcomes literacy and language barriers, a significant challenge in India's diverse linguistic landscape.

• India could become a proving ground for the next generation of generative AI products with potential global applications.

Cursor AI: Developers New Best Friend

Generative Coding AI assistants are the new sidekicks to help developers write cleaner code, faster.

😎 The coding AI assistant du jour is Cursor. It’s used by engineers from many top AI startups including OpenAI and Midjourney.

Cursor recently raised $60 million in a Series A funding round, reaching a valuation of $400 million led by Andreessen Horowitz. The company has gained significant traction with developers, boasting over 30,000 customers.

Andrej Karpathy, Sr. Director of AI at Tesla and Founding Member of OpenAI, praised Cursor on X and said:

“Just empirically, over the last few days most of my "programming" is now writing English (prompting and then reviewing and editing the generated diffs), and doing a bit of "half-coding".

And then there was the demo from Ricky Robinett, VP of developer relations at Cloudflare, showing his eight-year-old daughter successfully creating a chatbot using Cursor AI in just 45 minutes👇🏽.

My take: I told my entire AI team and both my kids to download Cursor a while ago to test it out! I believe learning how to work with AI co-pilots relevant to your industry is essential to a career in that field.

WOMAN IN TECH

Meet Peggy Johnson, CEO of Agility Robotics

Celebrating this week’s Woman in AI 🥳: Meet Peggy Johnson, the CEO of Agility Robotics, the $1.2 billion company behind Digit, an autonomous humanoid robot designed for logistics.

Amazon, an investor and partner of Agility Robotics, is one of the companies using Digit in its warehouses to automate repetitive tasks.

With a Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering from San Diego State University, Johnson started her career at Qualcomm, where she spent 25 years and oversaw the launch of the BREW platform, an application development platform for mobile phones that generated over $3 billion in revenue.

Her career trajectory:

► In 2014, she joined Microsoft as EVP of Business Development, leading strategic partnerships and launching M12, Microsoft’s first corporate venture fund.

► In 2020, she joined Magic Leap as CEO, guiding them from consumer to enterprise level with the launch of an AR headset for business use.

► In 2024, Johnson joined Agility Robotics, where she is focusing on scaling the company's commercial deployments.

Johnson also serves on the board of directors for BlackRock and Huntington's Disease Society of America.

She has been recognized as:  

• One of Forbes’ 50 over 50 in the US (2024)

• One of the Most Powerful Female Engineer by Business Insider (2017)

• One of the 40 Powerful Women Leading Tech by Silicon Republic (2016)

Fun fact: Johnson was Satya Nadella’s first hire as CEO of Microsoft back in 2014, and made a name for herself as the company’s “chief dealmaker” after she led Microsoft’s $26 billion acquisition of LinkedIn.

So inspiring! A true rockstar!

Fun Finds

🤔 Could your next gym buddy be a robot?

Boston Dynamics' Atlas robot pushes the boundaries of dynamic movement in a new video, flawlessly executing push-ups.

ANNOUNCEMENT

Generative AI for Business Executives

I’m super excited to share that my new course, Generative AI for Business Executives, is now live.

Based on my experience building Gen AI solutions for our clients, I highlight the opportunities, challenges and how to extract value for your business!

Course Highlights:

• When: Sep 26th - Oct 8th, 2023

• What: 6 comprehensive modules covering everything from Gen AI strategy to industry use cases to how to identify use cases and build a roadmap.

• Live: 3 interactive live sessions with me

Click below and join us!