Technology

Liquid Death is just one of many VC-backed beverage startups poised to disrupt the Coca-Cola and Pepsi market

Published

1 month ago

March 24, 2024

IAM

March 11 carbonated the startup announced that it had raised $67 million at a valuation of $1.4 billion and had sales of $263 million in 2023. Did you guess that this startup is Liquid Death, a canned water company?

Liquid Death has now raised over $267 million in enterprise funding, despite being in a category that does not interest many investors. Beverages is a difficult industry for VCs since it is capital-intensive; requires a knack for choosing firms that may sell well on retail shelves or otherwise directly to the consumer; and inspires regular customers, not just once.

Science Ventures managing director Michael Jones told TechCrunch that his company is not focused on venturing into the beverage sector but supports Liquid Death because of its potential to disrupt legacy players like Pepsi and Coca-Cola.

“We were in the market for culturally relevant companies with better-for-you products that were redefining a tired and old category,” Jones said. His investment team hailed Liquid Death as an “extremely disruptive brand.”

Cutting the mousse

Some of these recent venture-backed beverage startups are hoping to upend the industry by creating recent beverage categories. This is often reminiscent of what tech firms do, said Dan Buckstaff, chief marketing officer at retail data firm Spins.

“You might think you can’t squeeze another category in here, and instead you approach it differently,” Buckstaff said. “You take inspiration from others, or maybe there’s new technology that allows you to do that, or data that actually leads to companies that can generate hundreds of millions in ARR.”

He said Liquid Death drew on beer marketing and shelf placement to achieve success not only on food market shelves, but additionally at events, in bars and restaurants and even at conferences. (Liquid Death declined to comment). In fact, at the recent Expo West consumer goods conference, Buckstaff hosted the Liquid Death event and his room looked like “we were at a real party.”

He took part in an off-the-cuff survey that asked participants how often they ordered beer or wine to appear sociable. Half of them said yes. This made him realize how huge the market may very well be for firms like Liquid Death, whose brand names and packaging are inspired by alcohol but provide a healthier alternative.

“For these people, non-alcoholic brands are well positioned for this and have great potential,” Buckstaff said. “And not only at social events, but just at home – people relax and drink beer. Instead, there are now many alternatives that contain mood-enhancing or relaxing agents.”

Not Beer is one of those taking a nod from these early firms. Founder Dillon Dandurand is launching a brand new company that may launch a brand of premium sparkling water on April 9. He said his brand was created with consumers selecting to drink less alcohol in mind.

“Gen Z is drinking less than any generation before them,” he said. “These people still want to have an excellent time, but they realize they haven’t got to drink alcohol to have an excellent time, and they haven’t got to drink that much alcohol to have an excellent time. In fact, getting a pleasant buzz but not getting wasted is probably more enjoyable.

However, resisting the noise could be difficult. Consumers care about two features that, according to Dandurand, give a brand a likelihood to stand out from the competition: taste and brand.

With so many options, brands need to communicate why their drink is higher than an identical drink in a given category, in addition to explain why a specific drink is higher than a drink in one other category.

“It’s an uphill battle,” Dandurand said.

Who else jumps out?

Water is not the only category attracting startups and VC funds, often from celebrity angel investors. Drinks containing vitamins, minerals, supplements and plant ingredients are also extremely popular.

For example, firms like Odyssey, which raised $6 million in enterprise capital in February from a bunch of investors that features Richard Laver of Rocket Beverage Group. The company adds lion’s mane and cordyceps mushrooms, known for his or her cognitive clarity and increased energy effects, to their drinks.

Other beverage startups attracting VC dollars include better-for-you soda startups like Olipop (backed by Finn Capital Partners, Melitas Ventures and celebrity angels like Camila Cabello) and Poppi, backed by Electric Feel Ventures, partners and Rocana Ventures angels. Each has raised greater than $50 million in enterprise funding. Healthy lemonade alternative Lemon Perfect has raised greater than $70 million in money from an extended list of VC firms, athletes and celebrities like Beyoncé.

Poppi – which has CAVU Consumer Partners and a roster of celebrity investors corresponding to Chainsmokers’ Russell Westbrook, Olivia Munn and Nicole Scherzinger – has captured about 19% of the drinks market since launching about 4 years ago. Forbes reports i.e. 1.5x greater than Coca-Cola. It also became the eleventh fastest-growing beverage brand last month, beating out brands corresponding to Monster Energy, Gatorade and Liquid Death.

The brand is successful by “marketing strategically to become part of the culture, with an active and loyal following” and “filling a gap in the industry by providing a delicious, better-for-you option,” Poppi CEO Chris Hall told TechCrunch via email.

VCs are chasing some of the category’s hit phrases. Coca-Cola bought celebrity-sponsored coconut water BodyArmor for $5.6 billion in 2021. BodyArmor raised $36 million in enterprise capital. In 2016, Bai, a maker of antioxidant drinks, sold the company to Dr Pepper Snapple Group for $1.7 billion after raising just over $10 million in enterprise capital. There are also smaller transactions. In April 2023, NextFoods acquired tart cherry drink Cheribundi for an undisclosed amount following a $15 million investment round in 2020 led by Emil Capital Partners, Food diving reported.

While these startups make great acquisition targets because legacy firms often prefer to buy somewhat than develop their very own recent products, some can do well in the public market, said Alex Malamatinas, founder and managing partner at food and beverage-focused Melitas Ventures.

“Of course, what is happening in technology and artificial intelligence is amazing, (but) at the end of the day everyone has to eat and drink every day, these are very large markets with significant TAM,” Malamatinas said. “Despite everything that’s going on, Monster beverage stocks are the best performers, not technology stocks.”

That’s a bit of hyperbole. Over the last 12 months, Monster is up about 16% to reach a good market capitalization of $63 billion, while the most respected firms in the world are Microsoft, Apple and Nvidia, each price multi-trillions of dollars. However, the statement that its market capitalization is higher than many tech firms is correct. For example, only 7 out of 100 firms on Bessemer Cloud Index are more beneficial.

A brand new innovation cycle for beverages

Buckstaff also noted that the largest food industry trade show, Expo West, is booming with more recent exhibitors. “This leads me to believe that we may have entered a new cycle of innovation,” he said.

Jeff Klineman, editor-in-chief of food and beverage media company BevNET, definitely thinks so. Beverage startups remain resilient despite a tougher fundraising market is a story of “haves and have-nots,” Klineman told TechCrunch by email.

“Over the past few years, funds have had more difficulty raising funds, strategic departments have put acquisition plans on hold and lending has been tighter,” Klineman said. “CPG funds are being implemented more slowly, and there is more competition for brands that are actually growing and doing well.”

However, beverage startups are also struggling to raise funds in the VC touch environment. For those that have not hit the “sweet spot” of repeat purchasers, who don’t see the channel growing or who show a path to profitability, the market is tough, Klineman said.

For investors, determining which brands will endure and that are simply fads is difficult, Malamatinas said. He cited the CBD drink trend from a number of years ago, which briefly flared up but has since been much quieter. The company avoided them, he said, probably fortunately, as did studies on the effectiveness of low-dose CBD drinks mixed.

“There will be some important events in the coming years,” Malamatinas said. “I think the main reason people are afraid of this space is that it requires a certain level of expertise. We have experienced operators. There is a certain level of knowledge and skill that allows these businesses to scale.”

For investors willing to put in the work and time to find brands that last, this category is likely to yield strong returns. It worked with Bai. Olipop and Liquid Death seem to be on the right track. Now let’s examine who will likely be next.

This article was originally published on : techcrunch.com

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Google Gemini: everything you need to know about the new generative artificial intelligence platform

Published

5 hours ago

April 30, 2024

IAM

Google is trying to impress with Gemini, its flagship suite of generative AI models, applications and services.

So what are Gemini? How can you use it? And how does it compare to the competition?

To help you sustain with the latest Gemini developments, we have created this handy guide, which we’ll keep updating as new Gemini models, features, and news about Google’s plans for Gemini grow to be available.

What is Gemini?

Gemini is owned by Google long promised, a family of next-generation GenAI models developed by Google’s artificial intelligence labs DeepMind and Google Research. It is available in three flavors:

Gemini Ultrathe best Gemini model.
Gemini Pro“lite” Gemini model.
Gemini Nanoa smaller “distilled” model that works on mobile devices like the Pixel 8 Pro.

All Gemini models were trained to be “natively multimodal” – in other words, able to work with and use greater than just words. They were pre-trained and tuned based on various audio files, images and videos, a big set of codebases and text in various languages.

This distinguishes Gemini from models akin to Google’s LaMDA, which was trained solely on text data. LaMDA cannot understand or generate anything beyond text (e.g. essays, email drafts), but this isn’t the case with Gemini models.

What is the difference between Gemini Apps and Gemini Models?

Image credits: Google

Google, proving once more that it has no talent for branding, didn’t make it clear from the starting that Gemini was separate and distinct from the Gemini web and mobile app (formerly Bard). Gemini Apps is solely an interface through which you can access certain Gemini models – consider it like Google’s GenAI client.

Incidentally, Gemini applications and models are also completely independent of Imagen 2, Google’s text-to-image model available in a few of the company’s development tools and environments.

What can Gemini do?

Because Gemini models are multimodal, they will theoretically perform a spread of multimodal tasks, from transcribing speech to adding captions to images and videos to creating graphics. Some of those features have already reached the product stage (more on that later), and Google guarantees that each one of them – and more – can be available in the near future.

Of course, it is a bit difficult to take the company’s word for it.

Google seriously fell in need of expectations when it got here to the original Bard launch. Recently, it caused a stir by publishing a video purporting to show the capabilities of Gemini, which turned out to be highly fabricated and kind of aspirational.

Still, assuming Google is kind of honest in its claims, here’s what the various tiers of Gemini will give you the option to do once they reach their full potential:

Gemini Ultra

Google claims that Gemini Ultra – thanks to its multimodality – may help with physics homework, solve step-by-step problems in a worksheet and indicate possible errors in already accomplished answers.

Gemini Ultra can be used for tasks akin to identifying scientific articles relevant to a selected problem, Google says, extracting information from those articles and “updating” a graph from one by generating the formulas needed to recreate the graph with newer data.

Gemini Ultra technically supports image generation as mentioned earlier. However, this feature has not yet been implemented in the finished model – perhaps because the mechanism is more complex than the way applications akin to ChatGPT generate images. Instead of passing hints to a picture generator (akin to DALL-E 3 for ChatGPT), Gemini generates images “natively” with no intermediate step.

Gemini Ultra is accessible as an API through Vertex AI, Google’s fully managed platform for AI developers, and AI Studio, Google’s online tool for application and platform developers. It also supports Gemini apps – but not totally free. Access to Gemini Ultra through what Google calls Gemini Advanced requires a subscription to the Google One AI premium plan, which is priced at $20 monthly.

The AI Premium plan also connects Gemini to your broader Google Workspace account—think emails in Gmail, documents in Docs, presentations in Sheets, and Google Meet recordings. This is useful, for instance, when Gemini is summarizing emails or taking notes during a video call.

Gemini Pro

Google claims that Gemini Pro is an improvement over LaMDA by way of inference, planning and understanding capabilities.

Independent test by Carnegie Mellon and BerriAI researchers found that the initial version of Gemini Pro was actually higher than OpenAI’s GPT-3.5 at handling longer and more complex reasoning chains. However, the study also found that, like all major language models, this version of Gemini Pro particularly struggled with math problems involving several digits, and users found examples of faulty reasoning and obvious errors.

However, Google promised countermeasures – and the first one got here in the type of Gemini 1.5 Pro.

Designed as a drop-in substitute, Gemini 1.5 Pro has been improved in lots of areas compared to its predecessor, perhaps most notably in the amount of information it could actually process. Gemini 1.5 Pro can write ~700,000 words or ~30,000 lines of code – 35 times greater than Gemini 1.0 Pro. Moreover – the model is multimodal – it isn’t limited to text. Gemini 1.5 Pro can analyze up to 11 hours of audio or an hour of video in various languages, albeit at a slow pace (e.g., looking for a scene in an hour-long movie takes 30 seconds to a minute).

Gemini 1.5 Pro entered public preview on Vertex AI in April.

An additional endpoint, Gemini Pro Vision, can process text images – including photos and videos – and display text according to the GPT-4 model with Vision OpenAI.

Using Gemini Pro with Vertex AI. Image credits: Twins

Within Vertex AI, developers can tailor Gemini Pro to specific contexts and use cases through a tuning or “grounding” process. Gemini Pro can be connected to external third-party APIs to perform specific actions.

AI Studio includes workflows for creating structured chat prompts using Gemini Pro. Developers have access to each Gemini Pro and Gemini Pro Vision endpoints and might adjust model temperature to control creative scope and supply examples with tone and elegance instructions, in addition to fine-tune security settings.

Gemini Nano

The Gemini Nano is a much smaller version of the Gemini Pro and Ultra models, and is powerful enough to run directly on (some) phones, slightly than sending the job to a server somewhere. So far, it supports several features on the Pixel 8 Pro, Pixel 8, and Samsung Galaxy S24, including Summarize in Recorder and Smart Reply in Gboard.

The Recorder app, which allows users to record and transcribe audio with the touch of a button, provides a Gemini-powered summary of recorded conversations, interviews, presentations and more. Users receive these summaries even in the event that they do not have a signal or Wi-Fi connection available – and in a nod to privacy, no data leaves their phone.

Gemini Nano can be available on Gboard, Google’s keyboard app. There, it supports a feature called Smart Reply that helps you suggest the next thing you’ll want to say while chatting in the messaging app. The feature initially only works with WhatsApp, but can be available in additional apps over time, Google says.

In the Google News app on supported devices, the Nano enables Magic Compose, which allows you to compose messages in styles akin to “excited”, “formal”, and “lyrical”.

Is Gemini higher than OpenAI’s GPT-4?

Google has had this occur a number of times advertised Gemini’s benchmarking superiority, claiming that Gemini Ultra outperforms current state-of-the-art results on “30 of 32 commonly used academic benchmarks used in the research and development of large language models.” Meanwhile, the company claims that Gemini 1.5 Pro is best able to perform tasks akin to summarizing content, brainstorming, and writing higher than Gemini Ultra in some situations; it will probably change with the premiere of the next Ultra model.

However, leaving aside the query of whether the benchmarks actually indicate a greater model, the results that Google indicates appear to be only barely higher than the corresponding OpenAI models. And – as mentioned earlier – some initial impressions weren’t great, each amongst users and others scientists mentioning that the older version of Gemini Pro tends to misinterpret basic facts, has translation issues, and provides poor coding suggestions.

How much does Gemini cost?

Gemini 1.5 Pro is free to use in Gemini apps and, for now, in AI Studio and Vertex AI.

However, when Gemini 1.5 Pro leaves the preview in Vertex, the model will cost $0.0025 per character, while the output will cost $0.00005 per character. Vertex customers pay per 1,000 characters (roughly 140 to 250 words) and, for models like the Gemini Pro Vision, per image ($0.0025).

Let’s assume a 500-word article incorporates 2,000 characters. To summarize this text with the Gemini 1.5 Pro will cost $5. Meanwhile, generating an article of comparable length will cost $0.1.

Pricing for the Ultra has not yet been announced.

Where can you try Gemini?

Gemini Pro

The easiest place to use Gemini Pro is in the Gemini apps. Pro and Ultra respond to queries in multiple languages.

Gemini Pro and Ultra are also available in preview on Vertex AI via API. The API is currently free to use “within limits” and supports certain regions including Europe, in addition to features akin to chat and filtering.

Elsewhere, Gemini Pro and Ultra might be present in AI Studio. Using this service, developers can iterate on Gemini-based prompts and chatbots after which obtain API keys to use them of their applications or export the code to a more complete IDE.

Code Assistant (formerly AI duo for programmers), Google’s suite of AI-based code completion and generation tools uses Gemini models. Developers could make “large-scale” changes to code bases, akin to updating file dependencies and reviewing large snippets of code.

Google has introduced Gemini models in its development tools for the Chrome and Firebase mobile development platform and database creation and management tools. It has also introduced new security products based on Gemini technology, e.g Gemini in Threat Intelligence, a component of Google’s Mandiant cybersecurity platform that may analyze large chunks of probably malicious code and enable users to search in natural language for persistent threats or indicators of compromise.

This article was originally published on : techcrunch.com

Technology

NIST Launches New Generative Artificial Intelligence Assessment Platform

Published

12 hours ago

April 29, 2024

IAM

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), an agency of the U.S. Department of Commerce that develops and tests technologies for the U.S. government, businesses and most of the people, announced on Monday the launch of NIST GenAI, a brand new program led by NIST to judge generative technologies Artificial intelligence technologies, including artificial intelligence generating text and pictures.

NIST GenAI will publish benchmarks, help create systems for detecting “content authenticity” (i.e., deep-check false information), and encourage the event of software that detects the source of false or misleading information generated by artificial intelligence, NIST explains on newly launched NIST GenAI website and press release.

“The NIST GenAI program will publish a series of challenges designed to assess and measure the capabilities and limitations of generative artificial intelligence technologies,” the press release reads. “These assessments will be used to identify strategies to promote information integrity and guidance for the safe and responsible use of digital content.”

The first NIST GenAI project is a pilot study to construct systems that may reliably distinguish human-generated media from AI-generated media, starting with text. (While many services aim to detect deepfakes, research and our own testing have shown that they’re unreliable, especially in terms of text.) NIST GenAI is inviting teams from academia, industry, and research labs to submit “generators” – AI systems to content generation – i.e. “discriminators”, i.e. systems that attempt to discover content generated by artificial intelligence.

Generators within the study must generate summaries given a subject and set of documents, while discriminators must detect whether a given summary is written by artificial intelligence. To ensure fairness, NIST GenAI will provide data vital to coach generators and discriminators; systems trained on publicly available data is not going to be accepted, including but not limited to open models akin to Meta’s Llama 3.

Registration for the pilot will begin on May 1, and the outcomes might be announced in February 2025.

The launch of NIST GenAI and study specializing in deepfakes comes at a time of exponential growth within the variety of deepfakes.

According to data from Clarity, a deepfake detection company, 900% more deepfakes have been created this yr in comparison with the identical period last yr. This causes concern, which is comprehensible. AND last vote from YouGov discovered it 85% of Americans said they were concerned regarding the spread of misleading deepfakes on the Internet.

The launch of NIST GenAI is an element of NIST’s response to President Joe Biden’s Executive Order on Artificial Intelligence, which sets rules requiring AI firms to be more transparent about how their models perform and establishes quite a lot of recent standards, including for labeling AI-generated content intelligence .

This can be NIST’s first AI-related announcement following the appointment of Paul Christiano, a former OpenAI researcher, to the agency’s AI Security Institute.

Christiano was a controversial alternative as a consequence of his “doomeristic” views; he once predicted that “there is a 50% chance that the development of artificial intelligence will end in (the destruction of humanity).” Criticsreportedly including scientists at NIST, they fear that Cristiano may encourage the AI Security Institute to concentrate on “fantasy scenarios” reasonably than realistic, more immediate threats from artificial intelligence.

NIST says NIST GenAI will report on the work of the AI Security Institute.

This article was originally published on : techcrunch.com

Technology

Tips for Black staff: Protecting workplaces from AI threats

Published

19 hours ago

April 29, 2024

IAM

In recent years, the specter of job loss because of artificial intelligence has develop into a reality, especially for younger Americans.

An astonishing 43% of individuals aged 25 and younger most certainly do in an entry-level position – they lost their job because of artificial intelligence. A recent study found that 27% of individuals aged 26 to 40 have experienced the identical effect because of buzzword technology. vote of 1,150 Americans through Zeta’s online resume constructing platform.

Analyzing using AI within the workplace, entitled test revealed that as many as 71% of the workforce has already implemented artificial intelligence. Overall, 25% of respondents lost their jobs because of AI integration.

“The idea of job loss as a result of companies incorporating artificial intelligence into everyday activities is a constant topic of discussion and growing concern among employees,” said Dominika Kowalska, a profession expert at Zety.

She added: “The emergence of artificial intelligence continues to be a comparatively recent phenomenon and it’s worrying that so many individuals within the study have already experienced the worst-case scenario with artificial intelligence – being replaced by technology and compelled to search out recent jobs. “

Kowalska shared with BLACK ENTERPRISES via email that it is evident that a significant slice of employees are actively working to develop into more knowledgeable and comfy with AI. According to her, 95% of respondents in Zety’s report declared that they’re currently working on improving their skills in the sector of artificial intelligence.

He says Black professionals who recognize the foremost changes AI brings to the workplace are actively training and developingThe heir’s AI skill set might be best equipped to handle the change.

She gave some suggestions to assist them achieve this:

“Advocate for diversity and inclusion initiatives in your workplace to ensure that AI technologies are developed and implemented in a fair and equitable manner. Studies have shown that diverse teams are more innovative and better equipped to solve complex problems compared to artificial intelligence. By promoting diversity, you can help create a more equitable and inclusive work environment.”
“As artificial intelligence changes job roles and skill requirements, continuous learning and upskilling are a priority. Look for training programs, online courses and certifications in recent technologies relevant to your industry to remain competitive within the job market. There are several organizations, equivalent to Black in AI, that supply AI training and skills development programs aimed toward empowering Black people within the tech industry.

“Making connections in your industry can provide valuable insight into emerging trends and job opportunities. Attend industry events, join professional associations, and connect with peers and mentors who can offer guidance and support as you navigate the changing workplace landscape.”

test it out side AND Here for more information on how one can protect your work from artificial intelligence.

You can read other findings in Zeta’s report Here.

This article was originally published on : www.blackenterprise.com