###### November 19, 2024

The majority of AI models are powered by graphics processing units (GPUs), which are notoriously energy-intensive. [According to Goldman Sachs](https://www.goldmansachs.com/insights/articles/AI-poised-to-drive-160-increase-in-power-demand), by 2030, the increasing use of GPUs in data centers would result in a 160% rise in the need for electricity. Vishal Sarin, a seasoned designer of analog and memory circuits, established Sagence AI, originally known as [Analog Inference](https://www.sagence-ai.com/), after seeing that this tendency was unsustainable. The business focuses on developing GPU substitutes that consume less energy, tackling issues with both performance and the environment.

Sagence creates systems and analog chips for AI applications, as well as the software needed to program them. Analog chips use a range of values to represent information, in contrast to standard digital chips that store data as binary values. Because of this distinction, analog circuits may process data directly in memory and complete some computations using fewer parts, removing bottlenecks brought on by data transfers between processors and memory. Furthermore, compared to their digital counterparts, analog processors provide a higher data density.

Despite being available for decades, analog technology is making a comeback because digital processors can't keep up with the demands of the modern world. However, there are drawbacks to analog chips as well, namely the need for exact manufacture and the complexity of programming. Sagence markets its chips as an adjunct to digital technologies, focusing on certain server and mobile device applications to solve problems like latency, cost, and power consumption.

Sagence, which plans to commercialize its chips in 2025, is already collaborating with clients and facing competition from other analog chipmakers that specialize in AI, such as EnCharge and Mythic. Investors such as Vinod Khosla, TDK Ventures, and Aramco Ventures have contributed $58 million to the company, and it intends to seek more money to grow its staff of 75 employees. Sagence's cost-effective approach, which stays away from the newest production techniques, increases its allure in a cutthroat industry.

Potential opportunities for Sagence are indicated by recent trends. The amount of venture capital money raised for semiconductor startups [is increasing](https://news.crunchbase.com/semiconductors-and-5g/chip-startup-funding-bounces-back-ai-nvda/#:~:text=Thus%20far%20this%20year%2C%20VC,%2410.9%20billion%20in%20447%20deals.); in the first half of 2024 alone, $5.3 billion was raised. There are still obstacles to overcome, though, such as rivalry from well-known firms like Nvidia, expensive fabrication, and the problem of entering markets where established technologies predominate. The hazards are highlighted by the case of Graphcore, an AI chipmaker that declared bankruptcy in spite of substantial funding.

Sagence's success depends on its ability to deliver energy-efficient, high-performance chips while efficiently scaling production. The company aims to uniquely position itself in the progressing AI hardware landscape by addressing both economic and environmental challenges.

_Drive innovation through data with Code Labs Academy’s_[  Data Science & AI Bootcamp](https://codelabsacademy.com/courses/data-science-and-ai)_._


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Sagence AI’s Solution to the GPU Energy Crisis

###### November 12, 2024

[Amazon](https://www.amazon.com/) admitted that a security breach at a third-party vendor led to a data leak affecting employee information. Only employee business contact information, including email addresses, phone numbers, and building locations, was compromised; neither Amazon nor AWS systems were directly impacted.

Amazon reportedly does not have access to sensitive data, such as financial information or Social Security numbers, but refuses to say how many employees were affected. [According to Amazon](https://techcrunch.com/2024/11/11/amazon-confirms-employee-data-stolen-after-hacker-claims-moveit-breach/), the supplier has since fixed the security flaw that caused the hack.

The confirmation comes after a hacker, going by the pseudonym "Nam3L3ss", claimed to have published data from Amazon and 24 other major companies on the known forum BreachForums. The alleged massive exploitation of [MOVEit Transfer in 2023](https://www.emsisoft.com/en/blog/44123/unpacking-the-moveit-breach-statistics-and-analysis/) (a major flaw using a zero-day vulnerability in Progress Software's file transfer solution) reportedly resulted in the acquisition of more than 2.8 million rows of data.

The Clop ransomware group was responsible for the MOVEit hack, which affected more than 1,000 companies, including U.S. government contractor Maximus, the Colorado Department of Health Care Policy and Financing, and the Oregon Department of Transportation. 

With cyber threats constantly growing and becoming more sophisticated, incidents like this highlight the critical importance of cybersecurity for businesses of all types. Data breaches are becoming more frequent and serious, highlighting the critical need for qualified cybersecurity specialists who can detect weaknesses and protect private data.

If you have a strong interest in cybersecurity or want to get started in this growing industry, [Code Labs Academy](https://codelabsacademy.com/) offers a comprehensive [cybersecurity bootcamp](https://codelabsacademy.com/courses/cybersecurity) that will give you the skills and information you need. Learn how to defend your organization's data, fend off cyberattacks, and maintain your edge in a high-demand field.


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Amazon Confirms Employee Data Compromised in MOVEit Breach Following Hacker’s Claims

###### November 7, 2024

[Glint Solar](https://www.glintsolar.com/), a Norwegian SaaS company, is making a splash in the renewable energy space as solar power continues to gain traction. Leading energy companies including E.ON, Recurrent Energy and Statkraft use the startup's platform, which accelerates the planning and pre-design of solar projects and allows installations to operate faster.

Glint Solar intends to use its $8 million Series A capital to expand across Europe, beyond its current core markets in the UK, France, Germany and the Nordic region. Developers can evaluate possible sites faster thanks to the platform's capabilities, which include yield projections, country-specific GIS data and flexible layouts. The program also provides cloud-based collaboration features that facilitate seamless communication between stakeholders by giving project teams instant access to critical data and the ability to create 3D project plans.

CEO and co-founder Harald [Olderheim told TechCrunch](https://techcrunch.com/2024/11/07/glint-solar-grabs-8m-to-help-accelerate-solar-energy-adoption-across-europe/) that since its first initial investment of $3 million in 2022, Glint Solar has significantly increased the size of its customer base. With land-based solar installations accounting for the majority of market demand, the company is focusing its efforts on these. Glint Solar has refined its approach to large-scale installations, which represent 60% of the market and are a powerful accelerator of impact in the renewable energy space, although the software can enable floating solar.

Product development will also be fueled by the Series A funds, including features that make it easier to install batteries for energy storage, an area that is expected to maximize investments in renewable energy. This update helps developers create more comprehensive energy solutions by taking into account variables such as network capacity and environmental constraints.

Olderheim noted that complicated approval procedures continue to cause delays in project schedules, even though the costs of solar installations have declined significantly over the past decade. The goal of Glint Solar Accessible Design is to streamline project management so teams can work more productively on solar farm organization, assessments, and design. The technology can triple project pipelines and increase the speed of site assessments, according to customer reports.

The Series A funding was led by Smedvig Ventures, with support from Momentum, Antler Nordic, Antler Elevate and Futurum Ventures. Jonathan Lerner, partner at Smedvig Ventures, highlighted the benefits of Glint Solar's overall strategy, noting that it could save significant funds on crucial green energy initiatives.

\
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Glint Solar Raises $8M to Boost Solar Energy Expansion Across Europe


###### November 5, 2024

[ESM3](https://www.evolutionaryscale.ai/blog/esm3-release), a new artificial intelligence (AI) created by EvolutionaryScale, a US company founded by former Meta workers, can design proteins with specified properties, a process that would normally take hundreds of millions of years to evolve in an organic way. The company unveiled this generative masked language model, one of the largest biological AIs to date, in a [recent preprint on BioRxiv](https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.07.01.600583v1.full). The ability of ESM3 to simultaneously produce the amino acid sequence, three-dimensional structure and function of a protein in response to particular signals is unique and opens the door to uses in materials research, drug development drugs and carbon storage proteins.

Since proteins are microscopic biomachines vital for many bodily processes, including the formation of muscles, hair and nails as well as the production of hormones and antibodies, their three-dimensional structure is of great biological and pharmacological importance. Knowing the structure of proteins helps to understand their biological function, evaluate their eligibility as therapeutic targets, and determine their effectiveness as treatments. Proteins are the building blocks of several life-saving drugs, including insulin and synthetic antibodies against serious respiratory infections like RSV and cancer. Instead of laboriously searching for natural variants, medical research increasingly needs to make entirely new proteins with certain characteristics.

For protein synthesis, EvolutionaryScale's ESM3 uses a hidden language model that can fill in the gaps in various categories by looking at the context from different angles. The model used a separate alphabet for each category (sequence, 3D structure and function) and was trained on a large dataset including 2.8 billion amino acid sequences, 236 million protein structures and 539 million protein functions . To enable the model to understand context both within and across these many layers, the team found a way to represent each 3D structure as a series of characters.

The startup tasked the model with the challenge of creating synthetic versions of green fluorescent protein (GFP), responsible for the naturally occurring light in marine species like corals and jellyfish, to demonstrate the potential of ESM3. GFP, which won the 2008 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, is an essential protein in molecular biology that allows scientists to identify and track components of living cells. Although it had only a 58% genetic resemblance to its natural counterpart, “esmGFP,” the finest synthetic variant of GFP produced by ESM3, had a high brightness comparable to that of natural GFP. According to the researchers, creating this new fluorescent protein would be equivalent to mimicking more than 500 million years of evolution.

EvolutionaryScale Chief Scientist Alex Rives was involved in previous iterations of the ESM model at Meta. The team decided to continue this study alone after Meta stopped working in this area last year. As a result, the fluorescent protein has just been announced and $142 million has been invested to commercialize these advances. A smaller, open access version of EvolutionaryScale has also been made available for scientific research, but it is not fully functional. While he was excited to test the model, Martin Pacesa of the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne [mentioned in an interview](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-02214-x) that it would take a lot of computing power to reproduce the full version.

*Stay on top of the[ latest in technology and innovation](https://codelabsacademy.com/news) with updates from[ Code Labs Academy](https://codelabsacademy.com/).*


Sagence AI’s Solution to the GPU Energy Crisis

Amazon Confirms Employee Data Compromised in MOVEit Breach Following Hacker’s Claims

Glint Solar Raises $8M to Boost Solar Energy Expansion Across Europe

Simulating Evolution: How ESM3 Language Model Transforms Protein Development