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Austin AITX Meetup Recap at Google's Office & Breakthroughs in Drug Discovery

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AITX Team
September 27, 2024

Hello everyone! AITX Team here with more updates this week.

If you’re new here, welcome! 👋 At AITX, we aim to:

  • Connect you with like-minded peers passionate about AI.

  • Provide a space for sharing ideas and receiving feedback on AI projects you’re building.

  • Share helpful tools and invaluable resources.

Before we jump into the regular news, a few housekeeping items:

  1. August AITX Meetups: 

    Our upcoming meetups:

  2. To stay in the loop on all our monthly meetups and other community organized events, subscribe to our AITX calendar here.

  3. Check out our Community Directory:

    We recently started a community directory where you can fill out your profile and find other members of the AITX community.

    If you haven’t filled out your profile yet, please follow the link HERE and submit your information.

Thank you to our sponsors

⭐️ CIBC Innovation

AITX is happy to have CIBC as a sponsor for our next San Antonio AITX Meetup!

(still a chance to signup here)

Here’s a look at what they do:

We help today’s investors and tomorrow’s entrepreneurs succeed by providing strategic advice, valuable access to venture and growth capital, and connections when it’s needed most.

CIBC

Discover why CIBC Innovation Banking is the lending partner of choice for entrepreneurs and investors across North America.

Check them out here.

In this week’s edition you’re getting:

🤠 Meetup Recap

5 Upcoming Events

3 AI Community Stories

1 Community Highlight

So let’s jump in!

AITX Austin Meetup Recap

We had 3 demos at this meetup:

1. TensorStax by Aria Attar

TensorStax is building autonomous AI agents capable of independently handling data engineering and MLOps workloads.

These AI agents manage ETL jobs, model training, deployment, version control and custom dashboards for observability - executing the entire data science workflow with minimal human intervention

Join the waitlist 👉️ HERE

Toolhouse is a cloud platform that simplifies building and deploying AI applications with LLMs by providing a low-latency infrastructure, a marketplace of prebuilt tools, and a universal SDK that works with any major AI framework.

Developers can install tools like code execution or semantic search with one click, saving time on integrations.

The startup is being built in the heart of ATX, and they are running a promotion for ATX AI devs and giving out $150 credits for $1 until the end of the week.

Signup here 👉️ Beta Access

3. Vertex AI by Andrew Smith

Andrew Smith from Google was happy to connect with other developers and share Function Calling from Gemini.

We thank him for taking the time to share his knowledge with the Austin developer community to help them learn how they can better leverage models like Gemini.

UPCOMING EVENTS

  • When: Wednesday, October 2 | 6:30 PM - 8:30 PM CST

  • Where: 701 Brazos St 701 Brazos St · Austin, TX

  • What: Join Andrew Lane, veteran brand builder and AI content strategist, for an advanced workshop on pushing the boundaries of AI-assisted marketing. Andrew has built a multi-million dollar digital product business while helping thousands of entrepreneurs build their own profitable online brands.

  • When: Thursday, October 3 | 5:30 PM - 7:30 PM CST

  • Where: Capital Factory 701 Brazos St · Austin, TX

  • What: This talk cuts through the hype and shows opinionated workflows of how developers at Google use Gemini models to solve real-world problems.

  • When: Thursday, October 10 | 6:30 PM - 8:00 PM CST

  • Where: 701 Brazos St 701 Brazos St · Austin, TX

  • What: Connect with other artists, creatives, and technologists and stay updated on the latest developments in the arts and AI-tech space.

  • When: Wednesday, October 2 | 6:00 PM - 9:00 PM CST

  • Where: ACC - RGC 3000 1218 West Avenue · Austin, TX

  • What: A passionate about unlocking the potential of AI and LangChain technology through our “Learning in the Open” approach. The group is recognized for rapid growth, award-winning labs, and a diverse membership driving AI-assisted work forward.

  • When: Tuesday, October 1 | 7:00 PM to 9:00 PM CST

  • Where: Capital Factory | Antone's Room 16th Floor 701 Brazos St · Austin, TX

  • What: This Austin Deep Learning Journal Club event will feature two talks:

    • one on I-JEPA, a new self-supervised learning method for semantic image representations

    • and another on RNNs with expressive hidden states for efficient sequence modeling.

    Alexander Ponamarev and Rakshak Talwar will present these cutting-edge ideas, exploring scalable image processing with Vision Transformers and novel RNN architectures that enhance test-time learning. Attendees will dive into advanced machine learning techniques and engage in deep discussions about the latest research breakthroughs.

COMMUNITY STORIES

Alpha School in downtown Austin is redefining education with AI-powered apps, allowing students to complete two grade levels in just 80 school days.

Why it matters: This innovative approach showcases practical AI applications in education, potentially transforming learning models across the state.

Need-to-know:

  • Students learn academics through AI tutors for only 2 hours daily, spending the rest on life skills development.

  • The school reports students performing in the top 2% nationally in math.

  • The model has expanded to K-12 and launched in three additional schools.

Is AI-powered personalized learning the future of education in Texas?

Learn more here.

University of Texas at Austin researchers unveil EvoRank, an AI model that designs proteins for new drugs and vaccines by mimicking evolutionary processes.

Why it matters: This research positions Texas at the forefront of AI applications in biotechnology, potentially revolutionizing drug development and attracting further investment to the state's AI ecosystem.

Need-to-know:

  • EvoRank learns from 3 billion years of protein evolution to create new, functional proteins.

  • The AI could dramatically reduce the time and cost of developing protein-based drugs.

  • UT Austin received $2.5 million in grants to apply this AI technology to herpesvirus vaccine development.

How will this AI-driven approach to drug discovery reshape Texas's biotech landscape?

Learn more here.

Statt Inc., an Austin-based AI company, has raised $2.8 million in seed funding to scale its SaaS platform for public policy and regulatory insights.

Why it matters: This funding success highlights Austin's growing prominence as a hub for innovative AI startups, particularly those applying AI to traditionally non-tech sectors.

Need-to-know:

  • Statt's AI platform analyzes millions of public policy documents for real-time insights.

  • The company has partnerships with tech giants like Microsoft and Google.

  • Investors include Moneta Ventures, Clutch VC, and Austin-based Next Coast Ventures.

Learn more here.

COMMUNITY HIGHLIGHT

This week we’re highlighting Claire Dubiel!


Here’s a little bit about her:

Claire is a native Austinite and AI Enthusiast.

She studied computer science at UT Austin and launched Allura.ai in 2024.

Allura.ai is an AI voice-enabled platform where businesses can create ai-powered virtual employees to do customized actions ranging from front desk assistants, setting appointments, and more!

Watch a demo of Allura here 👉️ DEMO

Connect with Claire on LinkedIn here.

That’s all for now, folks!

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