FRANCISCO PARTNERS RAISES $21B, BETS ON AI-SOFTWARE FUTURE
■ AI-SUMMARIZED FROM 1 SOURCE ▸ TIMELINE
Francisco Partners exceeded its $18B fundraising target, closing a $21B fund as co-founder Dipanjan Deb dismissed concerns that AI will disrupt the software industry.
■ MORE FROM THE AI DESK
Major AI companies are recruiting top university researchers at an accelerating pace, shifting research from public institutions to private industry labs. This brain drain is transforming once-open academic work into proprietary, closed-door projects.
Moonshot AI founder Yang Zhilin's departure from the US reflects a broader shift: Chinese entrepreneurs increasingly see greater opportunities in their home market than in Silicon Valley.
Chinese AI models have cut their performance deficit against US counterparts to 6% in June, down from 9% in May, according to Bloomberg Intelligence analysis. The rapid convergence challenges assumptions about American technological dominance in artificial intelligence.
Apple has announced a new generation of Apple Foundation Models (AFM), featuring two on-device models and three cloud-based variants. The largest on-device model, AFM 3 Core Advanced, contains 20 billion parameters and supports multimodal tasks.