Dr. Rob’s new AI model promises to cut aircraft design time from months to days - Related to million, raises, lands, months, robots

AI startup Sereact lands €25M to give dumb robots better brains

Stuttgart, Germany-based Sereact has secured €25mn to advance its embodied AI software that enables robots to carry out tasks they were never trained to do.

“With our technology, robots act situationally rather than following rigidly programmed sequences. They adapt to dynamic tasks in real-time, enabling an unprecedented level of autonomy,” introduced Ralf Gulde, CEO and co-founder of Sereact (short for “sense, reason, act”).

Early Spotify and Klarna-backer Creandum led the Series A round. Existing investors Point Nine and Air Street Capital also chipped in as did several prominent angel investors. These include former Formula 1 World Champion Nico Rosberg, ex-DeepMind product lead Mehdi Ghissassi, and past Skype exec Ott Kaukver.

Typically, robots — like those Roomba vacuum cleaners — are hard-coded. This means they follow exact instructions that enable them to repeat specific tasks.

Sereact’s eembodied AI, however, acts like a robot’s brain, allowing them to analyse and even learn new jobs on the go. This is thanks to a machine learning technique called zero-shot visual reasoning, which allows AI to understand and interpret images without prior specific training on those types of images.

The model, dubbed PickGPT, makes robots smarter. It also means humans don’t have to pre-program them for each task, saving time for the companies that use them.

“The opportunities here are endless and it’s great to see this kind of innovation coming from Europe,” revealed Johan Brenner, general partner at Creandum.

Sereact’s approach is similar to that of UK startup Wayve, which raised $1bn in Europe’s largest-ever AI funding round last year. However, while Wayve’s tech targets autonomous vehicles, Sereact focuses on logistics and warehouse robots that do things like pick and pack, sort goods, and run quality control checks.

Firms like BMW, Daimler Truck, Bol and Active Ants have already adopted Sereact’s software at their factories. However, the startup is now looking to venture beyond the warehouse.

Sereact expressed it will use the fresh funding to develop new “robot hardware platforms,” such as mobile robots and humanoids. The organization also plans to expand its US presence.

“We’re on an exciting journey to become the leading platform for robotics applications that forever change the daily lives of people and businesses,” expressed Gulde.

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India-based Cybersecurity Firm Astra Security Raises $2.7 Million in Funding

Security platform Astra Security raised $[website] million in a growth capital round led by Emergent Ventures. Neon Fund, more effective Capital, Blume Ventures, and PointOne Capital participated. The corporation presented it will use the funds to drive AI-driven solutions.

While AI is evolving rapidly, threat actors are using it to find loopholes, leading to more security breaches. Sikhil Sharma, co-founder and CEO of Astra, addressed the fact by saying, “The cybercrime landscape is becoming increasingly complex with AI-based attacks.”.

He further expressed that traditional, periodic penetration testing is no longer sufficient in the current threat landscape. To stay ahead of cybercriminals, Astra Security is transitioning many businesses to continuous penetration testing.

While the engineering sector has embraced agility, collaboration, and automation, the cybersecurity industry has fallen behind. Their mission is to revitalise the security domain by incorporating AI, adopting a hacker’s perspective, and simplifying technology.

Astra Security’s pentest platform tries to simplify the chaotic penetration testing for organisations and defend from AI-based threats using its AI-powered offensive vulnerability scanning engine that emulates hacker behaviour to scan applications for 10,000+ security tests.

The business, founded in 2018 by Sikhil Sharma and Ananda Krishna, has uncovered 2,000,000+ vulnerabilities for its clients, saving clients $69 million and more in potential losses due to security vulnerabilities involving companies like Loom, HackerRank, ITC, Olx Autos, Mamaearth, Muthoot Finance, University of Cambridge, CompTIA, and Prime Healthcare.

The founders were hackers and builders who helped big brands like Microsoft, Adobe, AT&T, Yahoo, and Blackberry, which led them to create Astra Security.

“Security is increasingly shifting to the hands of developers, while security teams find themselves more overwhelmed than ever,” stated Ananda Krishna, co-founder and CTO of Astra. So, with the funding, Astra Security aims to equip cybersecurity teams with sophisticated solutions to keep up with the demands of today’s fast-evolving digital environments.

To begin with, they plan to focus on their product OrbitX and expand the capabilities of their scanning engine, which will allow organisations to defend their digital infrastructures continuously in real time. They also plan to leverage AI to enhance automated and manual pen tests.

Stuttgart, Germany-based Sereact has secured €25mn to advance its embodied AI software that enables robots to carry out tasks they were never trained ...

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Dr. Rob’s new AI model promises to cut aircraft design time from months to days

UK startup PhysicsX, founded by former Formula 1 engineering whizz Robin “Dr. Rob” Tuluie, has unveiled an AI tool that could fast-track the time it takes to design a new aircraft from months to just a few days.

Dubbed LGM-Aero, the software creates new designs for aeroplanes. Using advanced algorithms trained on more than 25 million geometries, the model predicts lift, drag, stability, structural stress and other attributes for each shape. It then tailors the design .

PhysicsX expressed the AI is the first-ever Large Geometry Model (LGM) for aerospace engineering. A barebones version of the model, [website], is also accessible free of charge.

“This is a first step in transforming the way engineering is practised in advanced industries [like automotive, aerospace, and manufacturing],” presented Tuluie, founder and chairman of PhysicsX.

“Over time, we will bring new capabilities to LGM-Aero and [website], allowing clients to select powertrains, add controls and further content to reach mature designs in days rather than months or years,” he revealed.

Tuluie wasn’t always an entrepreneur. For the first half of his life, he worked alongside Nobel Prize winners as an astrophysicist. Then, at 41, he entered the F1 scene where he devised designs that helped Renault, and later Mercedes, win four Formula One world championships between them.

In 2019, Tuluie founded PhysicsX alongside Jacomo Corbo, a Harvard-educated engineer who ran McKinsey’s AI lab. Together, the duo have assembled a 50-strong team of some of the world’s top minds in data science, AI, and machine learning.

PhysicsX, based in London, emerged from stealth in November 2023 with €30mn in funding. The business is on a mission to reimagine simulation for science and engineering using AI in sectors such as automotive, aerospace, and manufacturing.

PhysicsX says it is looking to help engineers more effective anticipate design bottlenecks, such as the drag of a new aeroplane or car design before they set out on building a physical prototype — saving them time and money. Its software acts like a supercharged wind tunnel for ideas.

“In the same way that large language models understand text, [website] has a vast knowledge of the shapes and structures that are key to aerospace engineering,” explained Corbo.

“The technology can optimise across multiple types of physics in seconds, many orders of magnitude faster than numerical simulation, and at the same level of accuracy.”.

Corbo called LGM-Aero “an significant stepping stone” towards developing physics foundation models. These are AI systems designed to simulate and solve complex physical problems by learning patterns from data and physical laws.

Applying AI to complex scientific problems is gaining traction. In 2020, Google Deepmind’s Alphafold model famously cracked a puzzle in protein biology that had confounded scientists for centuries. The discovery has accelerated research in drug discovery, molecular biology, and bioengineering.

Other companies, like Dutch scaleup VSParticle, are using algorithms to fastrack the discovery and synthesis of potentially game-changing materials.

While the applications of AI in science may differ from discipline to discipline, the benefits are shared: artificial intelligence can supercharge scientific discovery by analysing data, simulating complex systems, and uncovering insights faster than humans ever could.

So AI isn’t all about asking ChatGPT what to eat for dinner? No, dear reader, it’s a actually pretty big deal.

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