Each week, Quartz brings together product launches, updates, and funding news for AI-focused startups and companies.

Here’s what’s happening this week in the ever-evolving AI industry.

Amazon adds AI technology to delivery vans

Amazon (AMZN) is adding AI-based technology to delivery vans so delivery drivers can reduce the time spent searching for packages at each stop. The company announced this week that it will deploy 1,000 electric delivery vans equipped with an AI-powered vision-assisted package retrieval (VAPR) system by early 2025.

The VAPR tool will automatically display packages for each delivery stop by projecting a green “O” once the van arrives at the address, and will project a red “X” on other packages. The device also uses an audio and visual signal to alert the delivery driver when he has found all the packages for the stop.

A group within the Amazon Transportation team has been piloting VAPR since 2020.

Microsoft adds AI capabilities to help healthcare professionals

Microsoft (MSFT) announced new health data capabilities and AI models for healthcare professionals this week.

The company launched new multi-modal medical imaging AI models in its Azure AI Studio, which “enable healthcare organizations to integrate and analyze diverse types of data, ranging from medical imaging to genomics and to clinical records,” Microsoft said.

The company also announced a public preview of its Health Agent service in Copilot Studio, where healthcare professionals can create AI agents for tasks like scheduling appointments and matching patients. clinical trials.

And Microsoft provided an update on its collaboration with healthcare organizations, announcing an AI solution that allows nurses to perform documentation tasks so they can “focus less on paperwork and more on their patients.” .

Microsoft also said it has launched new features in its AI-based healthcare data solutions platform in Microsoft Fabric.

Nvidia’s first AI Tech community

Nvidia (NVDA) this week announced the launch of joint technology centers at Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh as part of a new initiative called AI Tech Community.

Through the “Joint Center with Carnegie Mellon University for Robotics, Autonomy and AI”, higher education professors, students and researchers will benefit from new technologies and “stimulate innovation in the fields of AI and robotics,” Nvidia said.

The joint Center with the University of Pittsburgh for AI and Intelligent Systems will explore computing opportunities in health sciences, such as the application of AI to clinical medicine and biomanufacturing, according to the chip manufacturer.

The new model of the writer, Palmyra X 004

Writer, an enterprise-focused AI startup, this week launched a “leading” extended language model (LLM) called Palmyra X 004. The model, which will compete with enterprise models from OpenAI and Anthropic, “benefits from state-of-the-art reasoning through new training techniques and a suite of powerful new features and capabilities,” the company said.

Palmyra X 004 is part of Writer’s enterprise-level LLM family called Palmyra. The model family can support more than 30 languages ​​and multimodal inputs such as images, audio and video.

“This new model was compared to models from Berkeley’s Tool Calling Leaderboard and early results show it leads by a significant margin, outperforming model providers such as OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta (META) and Google (GOOGL ),” Writer said.

AI startup Infactory raises $4 million

Infactory, a startup building an AI fact-checking platform, announced this week that it has raised a $4 million seed round, putting it in the top 1% of startup funding. The funding round, led by Bee Partners and including Andreessen Horowitz’s Scout Fund, valued Infactory at $25 million.

The platform “combines innovative software with high-quality data to address the precision challenges facing today’s AI services and hardware products,” according to Infactory. The company aims to license the platform to developers creating AI applications, as well as journalists, educators and consultants.

“At Infactory, we’re not just riding the wave of AI hype, we’re at the forefront,” Brooke Hartley Moy, co-founder and CEO of Infactory, said in a statement. Infactory also counts former Apple (AAPL) software engineer Ken Kocienda as co-founder and CTO, and Felipe Abello as co-founder and COO.

Legal AI startup EvenUp raises $135 million in Series D

EvenUp, an AI startup focused on AI for personal injury and document generation, announced this week that it has raised a $135 million Series D funding round, leading to a valuation of more than a billion dollars, according to a press release. The round was led by Bain Capital Ventures and brings EvenUp’s total funding to $235 million.

The startup’s Claims Intelligence platform is powered by its AI model called Piai. The model was “trained on hundreds of thousands of injury cases, millions of records and medical visits, as well as in-house legal expertise,” according to the startup.

“At EvenUp, we are committed to revolutionizing the personal injury industry in the United States,” Rami Karabibar, co-founder and CEO of EvenUp, told Quartz. “With our Series D, we are committed to further driving innovation by bringing new products and features to market to strengthen our leadership position in generative legal AI. »

EvenUp is “completely dedicated to supporting our customers by freeing up their time for routine tasks, allowing them to focus more on what really matters: their customers,” Karabibar said.

The company says more than 1,000 law firms have used its platform to seek more than $1.5 billion in damages.

Colossyan’s new Instant Avatar feature

Colossyan, an AI video platform for workplace learning, has released its new Instant Avatar feature that can generate “realistic” digital representations of users in seconds. The tool uses less than a minute of video footage to generate the avatars.

The company is “removing barriers to producing professional-quality, multilingual video content,” Dominik Mate Kovacs, founder and CEO of Colossyan, said in a statement. “This advancement opens AI video to many new use cases, allowing users to create engaging, personal videos that are both authentic and easily scalable.”

Avatars can lip sync and translate scripts in over 70 languages. The startup said it has implemented security measures, such as age detection and a celebrity safety feature, to prevent users from generating avatars of minors and public figures. The platform also has scripted moderation to avoid using avatars for content deemed violent or inappropriate.

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