Synthesia hasn’t always been considered at the sharp end of the generative AI industry. For six years, Riparbelli and his cofounders labored outside the spotlight in pursuit of their mission to invent a way to make video without using any camera equipment. Back in 2017, there were not a lot of investors who thought that was very interesting, says Riparbelli, who’s now 31. But then ChatGPT came along. And the Danish CEO was catapulted into London’s burgeoning AI elite alongside founders of companies like DeepMind, owned by Alphabet since 2014, which is currently working on a ChatGPT competitor, and Stability AI, the startup behind image generator Stable Diffusion. In June, Synthesia announced a funding round that valued it at $1 billion. That’s not quite the $29 billion price tag OpenAI received in May—but it’s still a giant $700 million increase compared to two years ago, the last time investors poured over Synthesia’s business. I meet Riparbelli over Zoom. He joins the call from his family’s vacation home on a Danish island, his childhood bunk bed in the frame behind him. Growing up in Copenhagen, Riparbelli became interested in computers through gaming and electronic music. Looking back, he believes being able to make techno with only his laptop, from Denmark—not a place known for its clubs or music industry—was a big influence for what he does now. “It was much more about who can make great music and upload it to SoundCloud or YouTube than about who lives in Hollywood and has a dad who works in the music industry,” he says. To get to that same point, he believes video has a long way to go because it still requires so much equipment. “It’s inherently restrictive because it’s very expensive to do.” After graduation, Riparbelli got into the Danish startup scene, building what he describes as “vanilla” technologies, like accounting software. Dissatisfied, he moved to London in search of something more sci-fi. After trying his hand at crypto and VR projects, he started reading about deepfakes and found himself gripped by the potential. In 2017, he joined up with fellow Dane, Steffen Tjerrild, and two computer vision professors, Lourdes Agapito and Matthias Niessner, and together they launched Synthesia. Over the past six years, the company has built a dizzying library of avatars. They’re available in different genders, skin tones, and uniforms. There are hipsters and call center workers. Santa is available in multiple ethnicities. Within Synthesia’s platform, clients can customize the language their avatars speak, their accents, even at what point in a script they raise their eyebrows. Riparbelli says his favorite is Alex, a classically pretty but unremarkable avatar who looks to be in her mid-twenties and has mid-length brown hair. There is a real human version of Alex who’s out there wandering the streets somewhere. Synthesia trains its algorithms on footage of actors filmed in its own production studios. Owning that data is a big draw to investors. “Basically what all their algorithms need is 3D data, because it’s all about understanding how humans are moving, how they are talking,” says Philippe Botteri, partner at venture capital firm Accel, which led Synthesia’s latest funding round. “And for that, you need a very specific set of data that is not available.”

Gideon: I hear you navigating a kind of, I guess, a broad political space. I hear you talking like someone who is part of both left and right political groupings. You know, you obviously—a lot of the people that you hang out with in Silicon Valley, or around Elon, are libertarians or conservatives, and then there’s a lot of progressives as well, and from the backgrounds that you habitually hang out in, I’m guessing. So am I right that I see youth trying to thread together different political viewpoints and think about how they can be integrated? Grimes: Yes. I really think one of our biggest issues right now is the polarization. Like, I refuse to be left or right. Like, you know, like, I’m—I’m scared about what we’re doing to young men and the discourse around men right now. Lauren: What part scares you? Grimes: There are a lot of issues with like male toxicity, but like—like we’re seriously, like we’re just telling men they’re evil for, like, things that they can’t—like testosterone is like a crazy war drug. Like why can’t there be a political platform that, like, makes space and room for—and honors—masculinity, like traditional masculinity, and like encourages it to be better in a constructive way, rather than, like, tearing it apart, that’s still is like into women’s rights and access to abortion and trans rights. It’s like, why are these things dichotomous? Like—like why are they fighting each other? Like— Lauren: What do you think is an effective way to do that though? Grimes: I—I think for me, it’s always about, like, the carrot and not the stick. What I would love to see is sort of, um, celebration of the good parts of masculinity. Like, how do you create a discourse that, like, encourages men to, like, push themselves and, like, be chivalrous? And like—like how do you romanticize, uh, a type of masculinity that is really respectful of women and supportive of discipline and like, I don’t know, like all the shit everyone makes fun of, but like— Gideon: I think I understand what you’re trying to say again. I mean, it feels like you’re saying, simply, the default way to criticize toxic masculinity is to try to take apart masculinity itself. And instead— Grimes: I think that, I think that’s, I think that’s what happens with—what’s happening too much, is like in our attempts to get rid of the things that have been so, so destructive, I think we’re tearing apart masculinity as a whole. Lauren: Should we do a rapid-fire round? Gideon: Sure, I’ll start off. What keeps you up at night? Grimes: We have an education crisis across the board, like kind of globally. Gideon Mm-hmm. Grimes: Almost everything to do with how we raise kids. Gideon: What makes you optimistic? Grimes: Young people, kids. I see a lot of Gen Z stuff that’s like scary and bad and traumatizing, but like every Gen Z person that I personally know, I’m just like, “Wow, fuck yeah. You are so sick. Oh my God. And like, so enlightened.” I mean, my kids, it’s like, you realize humans are actually born really great. We just fuck ourselves up, but like we start out awesome. Like we start out like enlightened, and, like, you know, I—I think that gives me a lot of faith, that like the natural state of the human is, like, a—a pretty wonderful one.

James Field, founder and CEO of LabGenius. Photograph: LabGenius The tests are almost fully automated, with an array of high-end equipment involved in preparing samples and running them through the various stages of the testing process: Antibodies are grown based on their genetic sequence and then put to the test on biological assays—samples of the diseased tissue that they’ve been designed to tackle. Humans oversee the process, but their job is largely to move samples from one machine to the next. “When you have the experimental results from that first set of 700 molecules, that information gets fed back to the model and is used to refine the model’s understanding of the space,” says Field. In other words, the algorithm begins to build a picture of how different antibody designs change the effectiveness of treatment—with each subsequent round of antibody designs, it gets better, carefully balancing exploitation of potentially fruitful designs with exploration of new areas. “A challenge with conventional protein engineering is, as soon as you find something that works a bit, you tend to make a very large number of very small tweaks to that molecule to see if you can further refine it,” Field says. Those tweaks may improve one property—how easily the antibody can be made at scale, for instance—but have a disastrous effect on the many other attributes required, such as selectivity, toxicity, potency, and more. The conventional approach means you may be barking up the wrong tree, or missing the wood for the trees—endlessly optimizing something that works a little bit, when there may be far better options in a completely different part of the map. You’re also constrained by the number of tests you can run, or the number of “shots on goal,” as Field puts it. This means human protein-engineers tend to look for things they know will work. “As a result of that, you get all of these heuristics or rules of thumb that human protein-engineers do to try and find the safe spaces,” Field says. “But as a consequence of that you quickly get the accumulation of dogma.” The LabGenius approach yields unexpected solutions that humans may not have thought of, and finds them more quickly: It takes just six weeks from setting up a problem to finishing the first batch, all directed by machine learning models. LabGenius has raised $28 million from the likes of Atomico and Kindred, and is beginning to partner with pharmaceutical companies, offering its services like a consultancy. Field says the automated approach could be rolled out to other forms of drug discovery too, turning the long, “artisanal” process of drug discovery into something more streamlined. Ultimately, Field says, it’s a recipe for better care: antibody treatments that are more effective, or have fewer side effects than existing ones designed by humans. “You find molecules that you would never have found using conventional methods,” he says. “They’re very distinct and often counterintuitive to designs that you as a human would come up with—which should enable us to find molecules with better properties, which ultimately translates into better outcomes for patients.” This article appears in the September/October 2023 edition of WIRED UK magazine.

Amazon is celebrating four years of Alexa in India. In order to mark the occasion, Amazon has launched a Hindi and multilingual mode in India. The Amazon Echo device users in India can now use the multilingual mode and switch between Hindi, English, and Hinglish when making requests to Alexa without having to change their language settings each time. Why Amazon introduced the new Hinglish mode in IndiaThe US-based giant revealed that in many households Hinglish has become a commonly spoken dialect in India households. This unique conversational style was the reason for Amazon to develop the multilingual mode for Alexa, with India becoming the first country where this was launched. How users can use the Hinglish modeThe Amazon Alexa users can easily make requests like “Alexa, Bollywood ke latest songs sunao”, “Alexa, Delhi ka weather kaisa hai?”, “Alexa, solar system ke baare mein batao”, and “Alexa, makar rashi ka horoscope batao” in the Hinglish mode.Alexa’s desi-ness in India delights customersAlexa in India also harbours uniquely ‘desi’ and charming responses that continue to delight customers. They enjoy getting to know about Alexa’s likes, dislikes, and personal preferences on topics that matter most to Indians. For example: “Alexa, kaisi ho?”, “Alexa, kya tumhe garmi lagti hai?”, “Alexa, filmy dialogue sunao”, “Alexa, tumhara favourite cricketer kaun hai?”, “Alexa, tell me a Bollywood joke”, and “Alexa, kya bolti tu?”.How to activate multilingual mode To activate multilingual mode, customers can simply say, “Alexa, speak in English and Hindi” or “Alexa, Hindi aur English bolo”. Customers can also opt for this language setting by navigating to their Echo device settings on the Alexa mobile app.

IdeaForge’s shares have been on the decline for the past six trading sessions, falling 13% during the period However, IdeaForge’s stock is still trading around 50% higher than its issue price of INR 672 per share The share price failed to rally despite the dronetech startup announcing bagging an INR 88 Cr order from the Ministry of Defence Shares of the listed drone startup IdeaForge slipped 6% to INR 1,008.05 on the BSE in Wednesday’s intraday trade after the drone maker announced its first quarterly results since its stock market debut last month, the lowest since its market debut on July 7. The stock has been on the decline for the past six trading sessions, falling 13% during the period. Currently, IdeaForge shares are trading at INR 1,015.70 apiece as of 01:42 PM on Wednesday (August 9). The market price of the company has corrected 25% from its record-high level of INR 1,344 touched on listing day. However, the stock is still trading around 50% higher than its issue price of INR 672 per share, having listed at INR 1,300 on the BSE, a 94% premium over the issue price. The share price failed to rally despite the drone startup announcing bagging an INR 88 Cr order from the Ministry of Defence for the supply of surveillance quadcopters with accessories. The development comes after IdeaForge reported a 54% year-on-year (YoY) decline in its consolidated profit at INR 18.86 Cr for the April-June 2023 quarter (Q1 FY24) as against INR 41.25 Cr in the year-ago quarter (Q1FY23). The company had reported a loss of INR 5.42 Cr in the previous quarter (Q4FY23). Revenue from operations was down 2.2% YoY to INR 97.07 Cr from INR 99.27 Cr. However, on a sequential basis, the company’s revenue from operations grew 151% from INR 38.66 Cr in Q4FY23 with an EBITDA margin of 3.1%. “Given the nature and nascent stage of the drone industry in our country, our business performance is not immediately comparable on a quarterly basis,” Ankit Mehta, the CEO of ideaForge, said. After the results were announced, the CEO said that IdeaForge has made ‘notable strides’ in its ability to innovate by introducing products engineered to serve a wide ambit of use cases. “The launch of the new Netra V4 Pro UAV as well as initiating the development of UAV logistics platform are a testament to this fact. Aligning with the sectoral opportunities, we are actively pursuing new product development and business models,” said Mehta.

Reed Jobs, son of the late Apple Inc CEO Steve Jobs, has launched his own venture firm — Yosemite Management. The company is a spin-off of Emerson Collective, his mother Laurene Powell Jobs’ investment and philanthropic organization. Based in San Francisco, Yosemite spun out of Emerson’s health division, where Reed Jobs served as managing director. According to a report in The Information, Jobs is leaving Palo Alto-based Emerson to head the new company. The company has reportedly already closed its debut fund with $200 million from prominent individuals and institutions, including MIT, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and John Doerr, per the report. Dubbed Yosemite Fund 1, the fund is said to have been oversubscribed. The fund will focus on health care-related startups, specifically those focused on cancer treatments. Yosemite will both make traditional venture investments and offer grants.Jobs has three siblings, sisters Lisa Brennan-Jobs, Eve Jobs and Erin Siena Jobs. Steve Jobs died in October 2011 due to complications from pancreatic cancer at the age of 56. On mission to fight cancer“We’re on a mission to lead the next chapter in the fight against cancer and forming our own standalone entity provides us the flexibility to best propel great ideas until they’re at scale,” Jobs said in a media release. “We believe this first close demonstrates investor confidence in Yosemite’s strategy of building new companies, trust in our extensive grantee and institutional network, and value in our combined experience in shepherding new transformational cancer treatments,” he added. 31-year-old- Jobs has been a managing director at Emerson since 2015, when he graduated from Stanford University with a master’s degree. At Emerson, Jobs led the organization’s venture investments and philanthropic donations in health care. Under his direction, the organization reportedly invested in startups including Dragonfly Therapeutics Inc, a developer of cancer treatments; Medable Inc, which helps life-science companies find patients for clinical trials; and TrialSpark Inc., a developer of treatments for skin diseases.

What Is Customer Acquisition Cost? While customer acquisition is the process of converting a potential buyer into an actual customer, customer acquisition cost (CAC) refers to the expenses that businesses incur in deploying customer acquisition strategies and the process. CAC is also a key business metric, as it allows companies to understand the costs associated with acquiring customers.   Why Is It Important To Track CAC For D2C Brands? For D2C brands, taking note of customer acquisition costs is crucial as it gives clarity on all expenses related to acquiring new customers.  Further, brands can determine the effectiveness of their marketing strategies. This helps in understanding how much money is required to acquire new customers and decide if it is a worthwhile investment in the long run. What Expenses Should Be Included In The CAC Calculation? While calculating customer acquisition cost, following should be taken into consideration: Money spent on advertising campaigns, including ad placement and agency fees Salaries of sales and marketing professionals, including hiring costs  Expenses incurred for in-house creative teams, third-party agencies or freelancers for design, content creation, copywriting and editing Expenses incurred in purchasing and maintaining marketing and sales solutions like CRMs and other email marketing tools Costs related to product innovation and improvement What Is The Difference between CAC And Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)? Briefly put, CAC provides information on a brand’s expenditure on acquiring customers, while CLV shows the revenue each customer can bring to the business. Some key differences are: Note: It is pivotal for brands to have a low CAC versus a high CLTV for profitability and sustainable business growth.  What Are Some Strategies To Lower CAC For D2C Brands? D2C Brands must focus on improving customer experience with their existing customers, as they will likely share their experience with potential new customers. Leverage social media to proactively engage with its customers who could fit its target customer profile. This can help in higher conversion rates and lower customer acquisition costs. Use email newsletters, podcasts and YouTube videos to advertise products and services to discover new customers. Invest in creating content optimised for search engines to attract organic traffic like SEO and SMO. This is effective for businesses that solve specific problems. Retarget people who have previously interacted with your website or content through Google and YouTube ads, as they are more likely to convert. Retargeted ads are cheaper than advertising to entirely new audiences. Start an affiliate programme to incentivise influencers, bloggers, media websites and existing customers to promote products or services.   Create a community by bringing people together. This helps in building trust and loyalty. Begin sending out email newsletters to provide valuable insights into the change you are introducing to people’s lives.  The post Here’s Everything You Need To Know About Customer Acquisition Cost appeared first on Inc42 Media.

There are so many times when you want to book an Uber or Ola or any other cab for a commute and you see surge pricing. Ride-hailing apps often put surge pricing when there’s excess demand or during “rush hour”. One popular ride-hailing app wants to get rid of it, according to a report by TechCrunch. David Risher, CEO, Lyft said that while surge pricing does offer incentives to drivers during peak hours, it can also be a demand suppressor. Often riders get put off by the high charges and either don’t hail a cab or wait for surge pricing to drop. Risher was talking after the company’s quarterly earnings call and said that Lyft wants to “get rid” of surge pricing. “[Primetime pricing] is a bad form of price raising,” said Risher. According to the report by TechCrunch, Risher is clearly not a fan of the feature and says riders “hate it”. “It’s particularly bad because riders hate it with a fiery passion. And so we’re really trying to get rid of it, and because we’ve got such a good driver supply…it’s decreased significantly,” he said. What is surge pricing? Surge pricing is a pricing strategy used by ride-hailing apps like Uber and Lyft to increase prices during times of high demand. This can happen when there are a lot of people requesting rides in a particular area, such as during a sporting event or concert. Surge pricing, as Risher mentioned, is designed to incentivise more drivers to get on the road and meet the demand for rides.The amount of surge pricing can vary depending on the demand for rides and the number of drivers available. In some cases, surge pricing can be as high as 5x or even 10x the regular rate. This can make it very expensive to get a ride during a surge, but it can also be the only way to get a ride if there are no other cars available.Surge pricing is a controversial practice, and some people believe that it is unfair to charge customers more for the same service. However, ride-hailing companies argue that surge pricing is necessary to ensure that there are enough cars available to meet the demand for rides. Lyft does plan to kill but will it succeed and others like Uber follow suit? Wait and watch.

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Income from operations zoomed more than 77% to INR 742.3 Cr in Q1 FY24 from INR 418.3 Cr a year ago While PAT rose on a year-on-year basis, it tanked over 33% from INR 38.43 Cr in the quarter ended March 2023 Infibeam Avenues’ total gross volume rose to a record high of INR 742 Cr in Q1 FY24, up 77% from INR 418 Cr in Q1 FY23 Fintech company Infibeam Avenues reported a 12% year-on-year (YoY) rise in consolidated profit after tax (PAT) at INR 25.46 Cr in the first quarter (Q1) of the financial year 2023-24 (FY24). In contrast, PAT stood at INR 22.59 Cr in the year-ago period.  However, PAT tanked over 33% from INR 38.43 Cr in the quarter ended March 2023. As per the company, its adjusted PAT stood at INR 32 Cr in Q1 FY24 as against INR 23 Cr in the Q1 FY23. For adjusted PAT, the company excluded the notional value of mark-to-market investment gain/loss. Without explicitly specifying the reason for the quarter-on-quarter (QoQ) decline in PAT,  Infibeam said that Q1 is seasonally a weak quarter.  Income from operations zoomed more than 77% to INR 742.3 Cr in Q1 FY24 from INR 418.3 Cr in the corresponding quarter last year. On a QoQ basis, operating income jumped 13% from INR 652.6 Cr.  Adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortisation (EBITDA) stood at INR 56 Cr in the quarter under review, up 31% from INR 43 Cr in the year-ago quarter.  Meanwhile, total expenditure in Q1 FY24 zoomed over 81% to INR 710.6 Cr from INR 390.8 Cr in Q1 FY23. On a QoQ basis, total expenses rose 14% from INR 619.7 Cr.  “… The strong performance of the company is the result of our relentless endeavour to build a great company with merchant satisfaction at the centre of all our business strategies. It reflects our collective resolve to evolve, innovate, and lead continuously,” said Infibeam Avenues MD Vishal Mehta. KPIs Witness Improvement The company’s total transaction processing value (TPV) rose 27% to INR 1.18 Lakh Cr in the quarter from INR 93,356 Cr in the year-ago period. While 55% of the total TPV came from payments business during the quarter, the remaining came from platforms vertical. Payments vertical includes offerings such as CCAvenue International, BillAvenue and GoPayments, while the platforms vertical includes payments related to the government’s GeM portal and other large enterprise software implementations. Similarly, gross volume soared to a record high of INR 742 Cr in Q1 FY24, up 77% from INR 418 Cr in Q1 FY23.  The net take rate (net earnings from each transaction) of its payments vertical improved to 8.4 bps in Q1 FY24 from 7.2 bps in the corresponding period last year.  Meanwhile, the company added, on an average, 9,500 merchants to its fold daily during the quarter. The total merchant count for its online businesses stood at 1 Cr at the end of June 2023. As per the company, the downloads of its omnichannel mobile payments solution, CCAvenue TapPay, doubled between April 2023 and June 2023 to close the quarter at 3 Lakh.  The company is eyeing a gross revenue in the range of INR 3,000 Cr to INR 3,300 Cr and a PAT between INR 130 Cr and 150 Cr by the end of the current fiscal year.  In a regulatory filing with the bourses, the company also announced a slew of new elevations to its top brass. While Vijay Subramanian will be appointed as the chief executive officer (CEO) of the platform business, Vishwas Patel will be elevated as the joint managing director of the fintech firm. Alongside, Mehta will now become the chairman and managing director of the company. In addition, the company also announced its foray into the artificial intelligence (AI) space to cash in on the booming AI-enabled fraud detection market. As part of this, it will establish its first AI HUB, headquartered at Gujarat International Finance Tec-City (GIFT City) with an initial focus on fintech and other financial sectors.  The company’s board also approved plans to list its digital marketing arm Odigma on the Indian stock exchanges. It also gave its nod for a ‘composite scheme of arrangement’ among various subsidiaries of Infibeam under which every shareholder of the parent company Infibeam Avenues Limited (IAL) will receive one equity share of Odigma for every 89 fully paid-up equity shares held in IAL. Besides, the company’s board also approved a proposal to increase its stake in cross-border remittance platform, Fable Fintech, by an additional 25% (that will increase total stake to 41%) for a total cash consideration up to INR 3.2 Cr and an additional INR 1.4 Cr consideration via compulsorily convertible debentures (CCDs).   Shares of Infibeam Avenues ended 2.69% higher at INR 14.9 on the BSE on Tuesday.