Ideamotive Weekly Digest #3

It’s finally Friday! We’ve been waiting a whole week to share with you the next Weekly Digest with the most interesting news collected by our team this week.

1. State of AI report: Big Tech vs Startups

• In 2018 VCs invested over $27 billion into AI startups.
• Europe surpasses the United States and China in the number of annually published AI papers.
• Amazon, Facebook and Microsoft are the top 3 tech companies who gobble up the most promising AI startups.
• Topics of the next year predictions are NLP, self-driving cars, privacy and governance.

2. Chain React 2019: Hermes Engine Announcement

• Facebook released Hermes JS Engine — an open-source Javascript engine optimized for React Native apps on Android.
• Comparing to Stock RN, Hermes reduced measurements for the metrics in sample demo: TTI by 2.29s (over 50%), APK by 19mb (almost 50%) and memory by 49mb (over 25%).
• With Hermes parse and compile is moved to build time. Thanks to that execution begin immediately. It also reduces the size of the application.
• Hermes code is in Facebook’s Github Repository

3. Announcing React Native 0.60

• React Native Core team announced the release of React Native 0.60.
• Many improvements are focused on accessibility. The list of important changes is listed on Facebook’s Github blog.
• There are major upgrades to the linking process. Autolinking is the replacement for react-native link.

4. Glitch is bringing remix culture back to the web with a $30 million Series A round

• Glitch is an online community which enable to upload projects and remix them by others.
• Glitch CEO Anil Dash said that the creative impulse for recreating the web has never gone away.
• The company had raised $30 million in Series A.
• Glitch is moving towards AI and is particularly interested in Tensor Flow

5. Anchorage Raises $40 Million Series B Led by Blockchain Capital, Visa

• Anchorage raised $40 million in Series B funding round, to accelerate the growth of crypto finance.
• Along with Blockchain Capital, Visa is an investor.
• Co-Founder of Blockchain Capital, P.Bart Stephens, believes that Anchorage is the safest place to hold digital assets.
• Terry Angelos, Head of Fintech at Visa, said that the investment was consistent with Visa’s global strategy.

Originally published at https://ideamotive.co on July 12, 2019.