Every six months, we guide our delegates through the homeland of digital innovation. The privilege of meeting with top-tier Venture Capitalists in Silicon Valley gives our delegates unmatched exposure to the finest and most recent breakthroughs in the digital realm. Our continuous dialogues with Venture Capital teams on new investments afford us a front-row seat to observe significant trends and foresee upcoming digital developments.

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Before embarking on the summit, we collaborate closely with our delegates to tailor the experience to their interests, ensuring that our engagements in the U.S. are highly relevant to their sectors with notable trends –some of which will be covered in this article- that are interesting to most technologists and enterprise CIOs.

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“We truly are seeing a recurring theme of capability democratisation in the world of digital technology, followed by a proliferation of tools designed to mitigate unnecessary sprawl and rapidly enhance refinement and efficiency of outputs.”

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In the beginning, there is a wave of accessibility to new capabilities. This race to adopt readily accessible but often generic capabilities is quickly followed by a rapid increase in specialised tools, aiming to tailor these capabilities to specific enterprise needs. This pattern was evident in the evolution of cloud computing and infrastructure. Initially, cloud providers democratised the availability of computing and storage (but it was generic, unrefined), and then solutions like Docker and Kubernetes focused the exploitation of cloud infrastructure by enabling the efficient deployment, scaling, and management of containerised applications. In parallel, cloud-based DevOps platforms and CI/CD pipelines streamline the software development lifecycle, from code repository management and version control to automated testing, deployment, and monitoring. All of these back-end tools make it easier to innovate at the front-end for specific user needs and use cases (through SaaS products, for example).

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Generative AI: The New Frontier

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The same wave of “tools for developers” is now observable in the Generative AI arena which has undergone a remarkable transformation. A pivotal moment occurred 18 months ago when OpenAI made ChatGPT accessible to the general public, catalysing a period of widespread adoption. Since then, the availability of powerful generative AI has expanded significantly, now reaching a vast audience, through a plethora of new foundational models.

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As enterprise users become exposed to the opportunity presented by generative AI, we continue to see a desire for even more specialised generative AI services tailored to specific industries and user needs. Similar to the evolution of cloud computing services, this is driving a range of ‘developer tools’ aimed at enabling engineers to make effective use of readily available AI models and maximise the impact against business goals.

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From the summit, the following start-ups offered us a peak into some of the latest AI and GenAI capabilities that are shaping the future:

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Improvements to GenAI deployments and performance:

• Martian’s Model Router manages GenAI deployments efficiently by dynamically routing requests to the most suitable Large Language Model in real time.

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AI application assurance and development of trustworthy AI agents:

• Vijil aims to create a trusted layer for Generative AI across various environments.  

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Preparing data for AI and bulk analysis:

• Unstructured converts natural language data into a format primed for machine learning (ML) applications.  

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Enhancing the operation and management of data governance - automated data discovery and visibility, integration and access:

• Select Star is an intelligent data discovery platform that provides automated data analysis and documentation.

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Vertical Focus: Healthcare

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For the first time, our summit delved into healthcare's digital innovation, where VC investments have spiked, spurred by the response to the COVID-19 pandemic and technological advancements such as genomics and telemedicine. Healthcare is a data-rich industry which makes it incredibly relevant in the world of AI - the utilisation of data analytics and machine learning (ML) techniques has become increasingly prevalent in healthcare to derive insights, improve clinical decision-making, enhance patient outcomes and optimise operational efficiencies.  

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The U.S. healthcare system is very complex and so opportunities for automation are seen to reduce friction between providers, payers and patients. Start-up, Infinitus Systems has developed a conversational AI named ‘Eva’ to handle routine business calls, allowing healthcare providers to better focus on their patients and partners. TRIPP, on the other hand, is leveraging consumer devices and wearable technology to enhance experiences through augmented and virtual reality, aiming to improve wellbeing.

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New Horizons: Quantum

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Looking beyond the current landscape, we explored some of the deep tech innovations coming to fruition. Access to quantum computing remains limited for most enterprises due to the complexity and cost of development. However, cloud-based services are starting to expand accessibility. Start-up companies like Strangeworks hold strong ambitions to be at the forefront of this movement, providing tools and frameworks that connect current computational ‘problem owners’ with the capabilities of quantum methods.  

By making quantum computing more accessible, Strangeworks enables a broader community to potentially solve complex problems across various domains that are currently intractable for classical computers. This will likely start to transform advancements in various complex fields, such as materials science, climate modelling, and pharmaceuticals.

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A Deeper Dive Awaits

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This SVTS Spring agenda was just the tip of the iceberg. We will delve deeper into these topics and provide more detailed company profiles in our forthcoming post-tour report.

Stay tuned for more insights as we continue to bridge the gap between today's challenges and tomorrow's digital innovations.

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Interested in joining Ntegra’s Innovation Programme? Contact us at hello@ntegra.co.uk or for more information, connect with Ben Parish, Head of Innovation at Ntegra.

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