tech:

taffy

BenevolentAI raises $115 million

London-based BenevolentAI, an AI company with pharmaceutical discovery and clinical development capabilities, has raised $115 million at a pre-money valuation of $2 billion, in one of the largest funding rounds in the AI pharmaceutical sector.

The majority of investors are from the United States.  The balance of raised funds came from existing investors, including Woodford Investment Management, said the company in a statement. Credit Suisse acted as the placement agent for the company. Additional details of the financing was not disclosed.

BenevolentAI has raised more than $200 million in funding since its inception in 2013. The company was founded by Ken Mulvany.

Read a blog post by Mr. Mulvany on the funding here.

[Image courtesy: BenevolentAI]

Just in

Snowflake to acquire TruEra AI observability platform

Snowflake has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire TruEra, providers of an AI observability platform. Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

Biggest Windows 11 update in 2 years nearly finalized, enters Release Preview — Ars Technica

Microsoft has released Windows 11 24H2 build 26100.712 to its Release Preview testing channel for Windows Insiders, a sign that the update is nearly complete and that the company has shifted into bug-fixing mode ahead of general availability, writes Andrew Cunningham in Ars Technica. 

Elon Musk’s xAI is working on making Grok multimodal — The Verge

Elon Musk’s AI company, xAI, is making progress on adding multimodal inputs to its Grok chatbot, according to public developer documents, writes Kylie Robison in The Verge.