Technology
Women in AI: MP Dar’shun Kendrick wants to pass more AI legislation
To give women AI academics and others their well-deserved – and overdue – time in the highlight, TechCrunch is publishing a series of interviews specializing in the extraordinary women who’re contributing to the AI revolution. We’re publishing these articles all year long because the AI boom continues, highlighting key work that usually goes unnoticed. Read more profiles here.
Dar’shun Kendrick is Member positions of the Georgia House of Representatives she has been chosen in 2010 she was 27 years old. She has an intensive profession in policy, equal opportunity and technology, including on the Committee on Small Business Development and Job Creation and the Committee on Technology and Infrastructure, where she is involved in the Subcommittee on Artificial Intelligence. She also worked with the National Black Caucus of State Legislators, the Telecommunications, Science and Technology Committee, and in 2019 created the primary bipartisan Technology, Innovation and Entrepreneurship Caucus in the Georgia House of Representatives.
Kendrick attended Oglethorpe University and received her law degree from the University of Georgia School of Law. She is a lawyer and in 2017 it was opened law firm and investment consulting to help women and black founders learn more about raising capital.
Briefly speaking, how did you start in artificial intelligence? What drew you to the sphere?
I began my adventure with artificial intelligence with a broad interest in technology. I’m a securities lawyer, so I help founders across the country raise billions in private investment capital, and I also advise VC funds. Therefore, due to my “day job”, I all the time hear about and have interaction in capital raises using the most recent technologies.
I used to be, and proceed to be, drawn to AI due to how interesting it’s for a policymaker to balance making people’s lives easier while ensuring that machine learning doesn’t disrupt our democracy and what makes us human. As a lawyer, I’m also interested in this because VCs and founders in the AI space seem to be bucking the recent trend of not raising as much investor capital as other subsets of technology. I do not know why that is obligatory and that is what makes it fascinating.
What work in AI are you most pleased with?
During the last legislative session of the Georgia General Assembly, I served on a small subcommittee on artificial intelligence that passed legislation regarding the upcoming election and “deep fraud” by political campaigns to influence the election.
This is only the start, but I’m proud that the state of Georgia has began having these conversations. The government tends to be years behind in catching up with emerging technology, so I’m glad we’re starting to take a look at every little thing related to AI – especially generative AI.
How do you cope with the challenges of the male-dominated tech industry, and by extension, the male-dominated AI industry?
Show up. I show up in spaces where these male-dominated industries would not expect me to be seen – events, conferences, discussions, etc. It’s the identical way I managed to break into the male-dominated enterprise capital industry: I just showed up knowing what I used to be talking about. I say and providing something of value that the industry needs.
What advice would you give to women wanting to start working in the AI industry?
Produce. Women are used to multitasking. In my opinion, that is top-of-the-line applications of generative and applied artificial intelligence. So I do know that ladies can produce a brand new AI-based product that may make life easier because we’re those who need it. You haven’t got to develop a product – you only need to be a visionary. Someone else can construct it. Show up. There are only so many spaces we will steer clear of. Continue learning. Technology changes so quickly. You want to give you the chance to provide value each time the chance arises and also you enter this space, so listen to YouTube and enroll to receive emails from someone talking about this space.
What are essentially the most pressing issues facing artificial intelligence because it evolves?
Fraud. Whenever a brand new technology comes along, someone is sneaky and cunning enough to discover a way to use it for evil. Particularly due to artificial intelligence, essentially the most vulnerable communities, resembling the elderly and immigrant populations, can be targeted. Privacy. A story as old as time and continued thanks to artificial intelligence. As you feed the AI machine more details about yourself, the higher it’ll turn out to be.
The downside is that it now knows and stores quite a lot of details about you. Data breaches occur on a regular basis. Hacking is one thing. So it is a problem. Adaptation for small businesses. Government, legal field, financial services. All of those industries tend to be more conservative and slower to adapt to latest technologies. However, in this dynamic world, slow use of AI is a recipe for small business failure. Government and company partners must find ways to train enterprises to respond to the changing technology and business development landscape resulting from AI.
What issues should AI users pay attention to?
Now you could have to second-guess every little thing due to the scam, and you could have to be picky in regards to the information you share with AI platforms. Additionally, users should know that AI technology is just as effective as human input. So there remains to be the potential for discrimination – consider artificial intelligence in job applications – which will result from its use.
What is the easiest way to construct AI responsibly?
Develop a written ethical framework with “DO’S and DON’T’s” that give attention to privacy, data security, anti-fraud measures, and continuous reassessment of discrimination issues in the system. Write down this ethical framework, share it together with your team, and stick to it.
How can investors higher promote responsible AI?
(See above) and with severance pay. In particular, firms that claim to be focused on ESG (environmental, social and governance) hold them accountable by asking the precise questions, requiring a written ethics plan and setting metrics to truly exhibit their ESG investment.
What all of us – the federal government, the private sector and individuals – need to do is to strike a balance pretty quickly between the innovations that I really like as America’s trademark and the rights – the precise to privacy, the precise to liberty, the precise to due process and nondiscrimination. The sooner we understand this balance and act, the higher we can be as a rustic and a world.
Technology
The company is currently developing washing machines for humans
Forget about cold baths. Washing machines for people may soon be a brand new solution.
According to at least one Japanese the oldest newspapersOsaka-based shower head maker Science has developed a cockpit-shaped device that fills with water when a bather sits on a seat in the center and measures an individual’s heart rate and other biological data using sensors to make sure the temperature is good. “It also projects images onto the inside of the transparent cover to make the person feel refreshed,” the power says.
The device, dubbed “Mirai Ningen Sentakuki” (the human washing machine of the longer term), may never go on sale. Indeed, for now the company’s plans are limited to the Osaka trade fair in April, where as much as eight people will have the option to experience a 15-minute “wash and dry” every day after first booking.
Apparently a version for home use is within the works.
Technology
Zepto raises another $350 million amid retail upheaval in India
Zepto has secured $350 million in latest financing, its third round of financing in six months, because the Indian high-speed trading startup strengthens its position against competitors ahead of a planned public offering next yr.
Indian family offices, high-net-worth individuals and asset manager Motilal Oswal invested in the round, maintaining Zepto’s $5 billion valuation. Motilal co-founder Raamdeo Agrawal, family offices Mankind Pharma, RP-Sanjiv Goenka, Cello, Haldiram’s, Sekhsaria and Kalyan, in addition to stars Amitabh Bachchan and Sachin Tendulkar are amongst those backing the brand new enterprise, which is India’s largest fully national primary round.
The funding push comes as Zepto rushes so as to add Indian investors to its capitalization table, with foreign ownership now exceeding two-thirds. TechCrunch first reported on the brand new round’s deliberations last month. The Mumbai-based startup has raised over $1.35 billion since June.
Fast commerce sales – delivering groceries and other items to customers’ doors in 10 minutes – will exceed $6 billion this yr in India. Morgan Stanley predicts that this market shall be value $42 billion by 2030, accounting for 18.4% of total e-commerce and a pair of.5% of retail sales. These strong growth prospects have forced established players including Flipkart, Myntra and Nykaa to cut back delivery times as they lose touch with specialized delivery apps.
While high-speed commerce has not taken off in many of the world, the model seems to work particularly well in India, where unorganized retail stores are ever-present.
High-speed trading platforms are creating “parallel trading for consumers seeking convenience” in India, Morgan Stanley wrote in a note this month.
Zepto and its rivals – Zomato-owned Blinkit, Swiggy-owned Instamart and Tata-owned BigBasket – currently operate on lower margins than traditional retail, and Morgan Stanley expects market leaders to realize contribution margins of 7-8% and adjusted EBITDA margins to greater than 5% by 2030. (Zepto currently spends about 35 million dollars monthly).
An investor presentation reviewed by TechCrunch shows that Zepto, which handles greater than 7 million total orders every day in greater than 17 cities, is heading in the right direction to realize annual sales of $2 billion. It anticipates 150% growth over the following 12 months, CEO Aadit Palicha told investors in August. The startup plans to go public in India next yr.
However, the rapid growth of high-speed trading has had a devastating impact on the mom-and-pop stores that dot hundreds of Indian cities, towns and villages.
According to the All India Federation of Consumer Products Distributors, about 200,000 local stores closed last yr, with 90,000 in major cities where high-speed trading is more prevalent.
The federation has warned that without regulatory intervention, more local shops shall be vulnerable to closure as fast trading platforms prioritize growth over sustainable practices.
Zepto said it has created job opportunities for tons of of hundreds of gig employees. “From day one, our vision has been to play a small role in nation building, create millions of jobs and offer better services to Indian consumers,” Palicha said in an announcement.
Regulatory challenges arise. Unless an e-commerce company is a majority shareholder of an Indian company or person, current regulations prevent it from operating on a listing model. Fast trading corporations don’t currently follow these rules.
Technology
Wiz acquires Dazz for $450 million to expand cybersecurity platform
Wizardone of the talked about names within the cybersecurity world, is making a major acquisition to expand its reach of cloud security products, especially amongst developers. This is buying Dazzlespecialist in solving security problems and risk management. Sources say the deal is valued at $450 million, which incorporates money and stock.
This is a leap within the startup’s latest round of funding. In July, we reported that Dazz had raised $50 million at a post-money valuation of just below $400 million.
Remediation and posture management – two areas of focus for Dazz – are key services within the cybersecurity market that Wiz hasn’t sorted in addition to it wanted.
“Dazz is a leader in this market, with the best talent and the best customers, which fits perfectly into the company culture,” Assaf Rappaport, CEO of Wiz, said in an interview.
Remediation, which refers to helping you understand and resolve vulnerabilities, shapes how an enterprise actually handles the various vulnerability alerts it could receive from the network. Posture management is a more preventive product: it allows a company to higher understand the scale, shape and performance of its network from a perspective, allowing it to construct higher security services around it.
Dazz will proceed to operate as a separate entity while it’s integrated into the larger Wiz stack. Wiz has made a reputation for itself as a “one-stop shop,” and Rappaport said the integrated offering will proceed to be a core a part of it.
He believes this contrasts with what number of other SaaS corporations are built. In the safety industry, there are, Rappaport said, “a lot of Frankenstein mashups where companies prioritize revenue over building a single technology stack that actually works as a platform.” It could be assumed that integration is much more necessary in cybersecurity than in other areas of enterprise IT.
Wiz and Dazz already had an in depth relationship before this deal. Merat Bahat — the CEO who co-founded Dazz with Tomer Schwartz and Yuval Ofir (CTO and VP of R&D, respectively) — worked closely with Assaf Rappaport at Microsoft, which acquired his previous startup Adallom.
After Rappaport left to found Wiz together with his former Adallom co-founders, CTO Ami Luttwak, VP of Product Yinon Costica and VP of R&D Roy Reznik, Bahat was one in all the primary investors. Similarly, when Bahat founded Dazz, Assaf was a small investor in it.
The connection goes deeper than work colleagues. Bahat and Rappaport are also close friends, and she or he was the second family of Mickey, Rappaport’s beloved dog, referred to as Chief Dog Officer Wiz (together with LinkedIn profile). Once the deal was done, the 2 faced two very sad events: each Bahat and Mika’s mother died.
“We hope for a new chapter of positivity,” Bahat said. The cycle of life does indeed proceed.
Rumors of this takeover began to appear earlier this month; Rappaport confirmed that they then began talking seriously.
But that is not the one M&A conversation Wiz has gotten involved in. Earlier this 12 months, Google tried to buy Wiz itself for $23 billion to construct a major cybersecurity business. Wiz walked away from the deal, which might have been the biggest in Google’s history, partly because Rappaport believed Wiz could turn into a fair larger company by itself terms. And that is what this agreement goals to do.
This acquisition is a test for Wiz, which earlier this 12 months filled its coffers with $1 billion solely for M&A purposes (it has raised almost $2 billion in total, and we hear the subsequent round will close in just a few weeks). . Other offers included purchasing Gem security for $350 million, but Dazz is its largest acquisition ever.
More mergers and acquisitions could also be coming. “We believe next year will be an acquisition year for us,” Rappaport said.
In an interview with TC, Luttwak said that one in all Wiz’s priorities now’s to create more tools for developers that have in mind what they need to do their jobs.
Enterprises have made significant investments in cloud services to speed up operations and make their IT more agile, but this shift has include a significantly modified security profile for these organizations: network and data architectures are more complex and attack surfaces are larger, creating opportunities for malicious hackers to find ways to to hack into these systems. Artificial intelligence makes all of this far more difficult when it comes to malicious attackers. (It’s also a chance: the brand new generation of tools for our defense relies on artificial intelligence.)
Wiz’s unique selling point is its all-in-one approach. Drawing data from AWS, Azure, Google Cloud and other cloud environments, Wiz scans applications, data and network processes for security risk aspects and provides its users with a series of detailed views to understand where these threats occur, offering over a dozen products covering the areas, corresponding to code security, container environment security, and provide chain security, in addition to quite a few partner integrations for those working with other vendors (or to enable features that Wiz doesn’t offer directly).
Indeed, Wiz offered some extent of repair to help prioritize and fix problems, but as Luttwak said, the Dazz product is solely higher.
“We now have a platform that actually provides a 360-degree view of risk across infrastructure and applications,” he said. “Dazz is a leader in attack surface management, the ability to collect vulnerability signals from the application layer across the entire stack and build the most incredible context that allows you to trace the situation back to engineers to help with remediation.”
For Dazz’s part, once I interviewed Bahat in July 2024, when Dazz raised $50 million at a $350 million valuation, she extolled the virtues of constructing strong solutions and this week said the third quarter was “amazing.”
“But market dynamics are what trigger these types of transactions,” she said. She confirmed that Dazz had also received takeover offers from other corporations. “If you think about the customers and joint customers that we have with Wiz, it makes sense for them to have it on one platform.”
And a few of Dazz’s competitors are still going it alone: Cyera, like Dazz, an authority in attack surface management, just yesterday announced a rise of $300 million at a valuation of $5 billion (which confirms our information). But what’s going to he do with this money? Make acquisitions, after all.
Wiz says it currently has annual recurring revenue of $500 million (it has a goal of $1 billion ARR next 12 months) and has greater than 45% of its Fortune 100 customers. Dazz said ARR is within the tens of hundreds of thousands of dollars and currently growing 500% on a customer base of roughly 100 organizations.
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