In Today’s Edition

• Y Combinator-Backed Decentro Acquires SaaS Fintech Neowise Technologies

• Rocket builder Firefly is close to announcing oversubscribed capital raise

• Meta launches Llama 2, an open source AI model that allows commercial applications

• Carvana shares jump more than 20% on deal to reduce debt by $1.2 billion

• OpenAI holding back GPT-4 image features on fears of privacy issues

• Medicine is plagued by untrustworthy clinical trials. How many studies are faked or flawed?

🚀Startups Nuts

Y Combinator-Backed Decentro Acquires SaaS Fintech Neowise Technologies

Decentro will integrate the payments and lending workflows and enter the debt collection space through this acquisition. The startup will acquire the debt collection dashboard used by Neowise. Neowise will operate as the former’s fully owned subsidiary.

Rocket builder Firefly is close to announcing oversubscribed capital raise

Firefly Aerospace is raising more money as it expands its operations. The rocket startup has been turning to acquisitions to meet demand. Firefly can currently launch its medium-launch rocket, Alpha, every two months. The company hopes to increase that pace to one launch a month. To match the expected increase in launch frequency, Firefly has turned to acquisitions. It bought launch and space transportation startup Spaceflight Inc. and assets from the recently bankrupt Virgin Orbit, while also doubling the size of its facilities in Austin.

🏭Business Nuts

Meta launches Llama 2, an open source AI model that allows commercial applications

Meta's Llama 2 is a new open-source family of AI language models with a license that allows it to be integrated into commercial products. The models range in size from 7 to 70 billion parameters and they reportedly outperform other open-source chat models on most benchmarks. Llama 2 is available on Microsoft Azure and will be available on AWS, Hugging Face, and other providers. A link to a research paper released by Meta with details on Llama 2's performance, benchmarks, and construction is available in the article.

Carvana shares jump more than 20% on deal to reduce debt by $1.2 billion

Carvana has reached a deal with noteholders to reduce the used car retailer’s total debt outstanding by more than $1.2 billion, the company said Wednesday. The agreement was announced in conjunction with the company’s second-quarter earnings. Shares of Carvana jumped in premarket trading Wednesday after being off roughly 7% before the announcement.

📱Tech Nuts

OpenAI holding back GPT-4 image features on fears of privacy issues

OpenAI has curtailed public access to GPT-4's image-recognition abilities as it can potentially recognize specific individuals. The feature could potentially infringe upon privacy laws in regions where the use of biometric information requires explicit consent from users. It could also misrepresent aspects of people's faces, leading to inappropriate or harmful results. There have been instances of the model hallucinating responses, giving users inaccurate information. Microsoft has been testing a limited rollout of the visual analysis tool in its Bing chatbot.

Meta and Qualcomm team up to run big AI models on phones

Meta's Llama 2 will be able to run on Qualcomm chips on phones and PCs starting in 2024. Large language models have primarily run on large server farms so far due to the technology's need for vast computational power and data. While Qualcomm's chips are well-suited for the kinds of calculations that AI models require, these chips will still have significantly less power than data centers stocked with cutting-edge GPUs. Qualcomm and Meta have worked together in the past, most notably on chips for Meta's Quest virtual reality headsets.

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🎁Miscellaneous

Medicine is plagued by untrustworthy clinical trials. How many studies are faked or flawed?

An anesthetist renowned for their ability to spot dodgy data in medical trials estimates that 44% of trials contain at least some flawed data and that 26% of papers have flaws so large that the studies can't be trusted. These studies resemble real research, but close scrutiny will show that the authors were incompetent or that the data was faked. Without access to raw trial data, even experienced investigators may miss hidden flaws. Journals need to assume that all submitted papers are potentially flawed and review the data before publishing them

💡What else are we reading and seeing?

• Typo leaks millions of US military emails to Mali web operator

• Twitter is working on new publishing tools for long-form articles

• What China’s slump means for the world

• Being a financial influencer is fun until you’re fired

• Buffett cut Activision stake before judge approved Microsoft merger

😎Fun Fact

The world's largest snowflake, measured in 1887, was about 15 inches in diameter.

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