Hi there,
Welcome to the 114th edition of Heartcore Insights, curated with 🖤 by the Heartcore Team.
If you missed the past newsletters, you can catch up here. Now, let’s dive in!
The State of Robot Learning - Vincent Vanhoucke
The arrival of LLMs marked a new era towards AGI. An era surpassing the otherwise long-standing promise of robotics in achieving human-like common-sense reasoning:
“Where the community had previously struggled on simple tasks akin to stacking red blocks on top of blue blocks, we were now seeing systems that exhibited real progress on complex, real-world problems.”
A simplified way the author uses to illustrate robot functionalities is by dividing them into three essential systems: Planning, Perception and Actuation. Historically, these systems have mainly been developed in silos - however, with the advent of LLMs, this is now changing:
“[...] the major subfields in robotics [...] Each has traditionally developed in parallel, and many would argue that this resulted in system-level issues being largely ignored and problems being tossed around like a hot potato across fields.”
Planning: with the introduction of LLMs, the first disruption came for the planner: Instead of thinking about robot actions in a strict geometric sense, LLMs have made it possible to operate on a more abstract level of understanding, focusing on the meaning and context of action:
“[...] the superpower of an LLM is all about commonsense reasoning [...] and that turns out to be a big deal for embodied agents trying to act in the real world.”
Perception: with LLMs in place for the planning system, it has been demonstrated that dynamic two-way communication between planning and perception can be achieved via VLMs. This has been particularly effective in creating a robotic system that is more capable of readily adapting and reassessing situations:
“Those VLMs are getting really good, let’s leverage them and make that two-way conversation an actual dialog. This is the idea behind Socratic Models, where a consensus about what the state of the world, and how to act on it, can be achieved through dialog between models.”
Actuation: similarly to the planning and perception system, LLMs prove to be valuable in addressing the final piece of the puzzle: actuation. This system is essentially code describing how robots should behave, making LLMs well-suited for the task:
“One thing LLMs are really good at is generating code, and at the end of the day, controller software is just that: a piece of code describing a policy.”
The introduction of LLMs has opened up greater opportunities in the field of robotics. Yet, despite LLMs many advantages, key questions and considerations persist. Among these, the author questions the future dominant direction of the robotic field: will it be diverse, inexpensive robots or costly universal ones, or maybe both? Undoubtedly, there remains a vast untapped potential yet to be explored:
“[...] the months ahead are going to be critical to informing where the field should go: diversity vs universality, cheap and scrappy vs high-DOF and full-featured.”
The Indispensability of Risk - Howard Marks
Navigating risk often entails navigating the uncertainty of the future, presenting investors with three primary choices: avoiding risk for minimal returns, accepting modest risk for corresponding gains, or embracing high uncertainty in pursuit of substantial rewards.
While the allure of substantial gains with minimal risk is universal, market efficiency typically limits such opportunities. Most investors can effectively manage low to moderate risk scenarios, but the true challenge lies in pursuing high-risk, high-reward ventures:
“[...] not having any losers isn’t a useful goal. “[...] Most people understand this intellectually, but human nature makes it hard for many to accept the idea that the willingness to live with some losses is an essential ingredient in investment success”
Ultimately, there is a paradoxical nature of risk-taking, where you have to take risk in order to potentially be successful, yet acknowledging that it doesn't guarantee success. It emphasizes that achieving a high rate of return over time doesn't imply consistent success, but rather results from a mix of well-reasoned investments, some of which may not yield desired outcomes. Investors are urged to accept that success often hinges on making numerous investments, understanding that not all will be winners.
“The paradox of risk-taking is inescapable. You have to take it to be successful in competitive, high-aspiration arenas. But taking it doesn’t mean you’ll be successful; that’s why they call it risk.”
Decisions Nobody Made, Marc Rubinstein and Dan Davies
Mark Zuckerberg - Llama 3, Open Sourcing $10b Models, & Caesar Augustus, podcast
Problem choice and decision trees in science and engineering, Michael A. Fischbach
The tech wars are about to enter a fiery new phase, The Economist
The autonomous robotics future is around the corner, Bessemer
Do software companies actually have good margins?, Benn Stancil
🇪🇺 Notable European early-stage rounds
Condukt, a UK-based KYB provider, raises £2.5M with Lightspeed/Cocoa/Tiny.vc - link
Zefir, a France-based all-in-one platform that allows people to sell or buy real estate properties, raises $11M with Zigg/Heartcore 🖤/Sequoia - link
Mimo, a UK-based platform simplifying global payments, cash flow, and financial management for SMBs and accountants, raises £15.5M with Northzone/Cocoa - link
finmid, a Germany-based startup enabling software companies to integrate financial services into their product portfolio through single API integration, raises €23M with Blossom/Earlybird - link
FlexAI, a Paris-based startup aiming to rearchitect compute infrastructure for developers wanting to build and train AI applications more efficiently, raises €28.5M with Alpha Intelligence Capital/Heartcore 🖤/Elaia/Frst - link
Flatpay, a Denmark-based fintech company that offers POS and payments processing solutions for small and medium-sized merchants, raises €45M with Dawn Capital - link
Tines, an Ireland-based no-code automation for security teams, raises $50M with Accel/Felicis - link
🇺🇸 Notable US early-stage rounds
Lil Snack, a US-based gaming studio creating games and daily challenges that entice players to come back every day, raises $3.1M with a16z/Lerer Hippeau - link
RevenueCat, a US-based subscription management platform for apps that monetize through in-app purchases raises $12M with Adjacent/Index - link
Exowatt, a US-based modular renewable energy solution, raises $20M with a16z/Sam Altman - link
Nooks, a US-based AI dialing & prospecting platform, raises $22M with Lachy Groom/Tola - link
Oasis Security, a US-based provider of Non-human Identity Management (NHIM) solutions, raises $35M with Accel/Cyberstarts/Sequoia - link
Kontakt.io, a US-based startup utilizing cloud, AI, and IoT (RTLS) technology to provide inpatient and indoor customer journey analytics, raises $47.5M with Goldman Sachs/Heartcore 🖤 - link
🔭 Notable later stage rounds
Perplexity AI, a US-based AI conversational search engine, raises $63M with Daniel Gross/Stanley Druckenmiller/Dylan Field/Elad Gil - link
Varda Space, a US-based space manufacturing startup that creates products in microgravity and retrieves them for terrestrial use, raises $90M with Caffeinated/Founder Fund - link
Ramp, US-based spend management startup, raises $150M with Founders Fund/Khosla - link
Cognition AI, a US-based startup developing an AI-powered coding assistant, raises $175M with Founders Fund - link
Island, a US-based cybersecurity company that develops an enterprise browser to enhance security and productivity within corporate environments, raises $175M with Sequoia/Coatue - link
Augment, a US-based GitHub Copilot rival, raises $252M with Index/Lightspeed/Meritech/Sutter Hill - link
Cyera, a US-based AI-powered data security platform that gives enterprises deep context on their data to assure cyber-resilience and compliance, raises $300M with Coatue/Sequoia/Accel - link
🖤 Heartcore News
Congrats to FlexAI for coming out of stealth, and announcing its €28.5M seed round 💾
Our partner Levin had a good chat with Gründerszene about our perspectives when evaluating new companies 🇩🇪
Another Paris-based Heartcorian company, Zefir, secured an €11M round to keep on transforming the French real estate landscape 🏠
Kontakt.io, reshaping the inpatient healthcare journey, announced its $47.5M Series C funding round led by Goldman Sachs 🚑
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