The year 2021 marked significant advancements in artificial intelligence (AI), with enterprises accelerating AI adoption to solve business challenges and boost revenues. AI startups experienced remarkable growth, securing substantial investments to enhance product offerings and meet escalating demand across sectors.

Key Developments and Milestones

Throughout 2021, several notable developments shaped the AI landscape. Here’s a breakdown of the major events:

January saw a flurry of AI innovations. OpenAI introduced DALL-E, a multimodal AI system generating images from text. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security tested AI for recognizing masked faces, while Uber researchers proposed a model emphasizing positive and polite responses. Salesforce released a framework to test NLP model robustness, and AI models from Microsoft and Google surpassed human performance on the SuperGLUE language benchmark.

In February, Microsoft launched a custom neural voice and Speller100, an AI spelling checker for 100 languages. Google released TensorFlow 3D for understanding 3D scenes, and Amazon introduced Lookout, a computer vision service for detecting manufacturing defects. Databricks raised $1 billion in funding, highlighting the growing interest in AI solutions.

March brought significant AI advancements. Facebook developed an AI model learning from uncurated images, Nvidia launched AtacWorks for genome analysis, and IBM introduced a cloud-based molecular design platform. Dataminr raised $475 million in funding, demonstrating the increasing value of AI-driven insights.

April marked a shift towards regulatory frameworks. The European Commission proposed draft AI rules, including a ban on social scoring applications and strict safeguards for high-risk AI apps. SambaNova Systems raised $676 million in funding, underscoring the importance of AI-focused chip development.

May saw Google announce its fourth-generation tensor processing units (TPUs) and LaMDA, a language model for dialog applications. Yelp built an AI to identify spammy photos, and AWS launched Redshift ML for model training with SQL.

June introduced AI-powered tools. IBM open-sourced Uncertainty Quantification 360, a toolkit for AI uncertainty, and GitHub launched Copilot, an AI-powered programming tool. Gong raised $250 million in funding, highlighting the growing demand for AI-driven sales insights.

July focused on robotics and NLP. Facebook open-sourced Droidlet, a platform for building robots leveraging NLP and computer vision. OpenAI disbanded its robotic division, and DeepMind announced AlphaFold 2, an AI system predicting protein shapes.

August brought significant developments in AI humanoids and supply chain optimization. Tesla announced plans for an AI humanoid, OpenAI detailed an API translating natural language into code, and Google introduced SoundStream for compressed audio. Databricks raised $1.6 billion in funding.

September saw advancements in weather forecasting and emissions. DeepMind claimed its AI-driven weather forecasting model outperformed conventional models, and researchers developed a machine learning model estimating business emissions.

October marked NATO’s adoption of an 18-point AI strategy and the launch of a future-proofing fund. Intel open-sourced an AI-powered tool for spotting bugs in code.

November introduced AI avatars and metaverse innovations. Nvidia announced Omniverse Avatar and ReOpt for supply chain route planning, while Amazon debuted Graviton3 processors for AI inferencing.

December saw advancements in AI gaming and language models. DeepMind unveiled Player of Games, an AI system excelling at perfect and imperfect information games, and the Hungarian government announced plans for an AI supercomputer.

Investments and Funding

2021 saw significant investments in AI startups, with:

– Databricks ($1.6 billion)

– DataRobot ($300 million)

– Gong ($250 million)

– Nuro ($600 million)

– Simpro ($350 million)

– Cerebras ($250 million)

These developments demonstrate the rapid progress and adoption of AI across industries, setting the stage for continued innovation in 2022.