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Hello! This is Alex Perry, and I’m taking over the newsletter today for Kaya. Happy Fourth of July in advance! As you might’ve noticed from our latest Creator Economy database update, fundraising by creator startups in the second quarter dropped from the year-ago quarter as well as the first three months of the year. It’s notable though, that investments in startups focused on artificial intelligence and marketing rose over both periods. In fact, funding for creator startups focused on AI topped $500 million last quarter. Nectar Social’s new $8.6 million funding boosted that total. The Seattle area-based startup sells subscriptions to community management, marketing, analytics and social listening tools that companies use to monitor trends and customers on social media networks like Facebook, Reddit and TikTok. Sisters Misbah Uraizee and Farah Uraizee, who both previously worked at Meta Platforms, founded the now 13-person company in 2023. They have raised $10.6 million in total from investors including True Ventures and GV (formerly Google Ventures.) As e-commerce spending grows, companies like Instagram and TikTok have added shopping features that allow users to purchase and sell products in the apps. International shipping company DHL estimates that seven in ten global shoppers have made purchases via social media, with 82% of shoppers reporting that trending or viral products impact their buying choices. The problem the sisters identified is that while brands can advertise and sell on the apps, it’s hard for them to tell what exactly generates business, especially if the popularity of a product depends on how other users are posting or talking about it. Nectar Social uses AI agents to continuously scour and ingest content on the internet, transcribing what users are saying about particular products. Companies such as sellers of beauty products and clothes can then ask the agents to produce reports about brand sentiment after analyzing frames and transcriptions. Misbah Uraizee said that clients that sell goods and services to parents often ask the AI agents to ingest and analyze videos of gender reveal parties to see what products are popular with expecting parents. “We’re basically consolidating a lot of the marketing tech stack into a single platform with Nectar,” Misbah Uraizee said. Nectar Social also has AI agents that help manage brand-customer relationships by responding to customers and suggesting products to them. The startup generates revenue by selling subscriptions to the different tools. Nectar Social uses several AI models to power its agents, including Google’s Gemini, Anthropic’s Claude and OpenAI. The company plans on using part of the recent fundraise to hire in marketing, sales, product and AI. While Meta, OpenAI and others fight for premier AI researchers to train the next cutting edge models, Farah Uraizee said her startup is focused on a different skillset, including an understanding about internet consumers and model prompting. Here’s what else is going on… See The Information’s Creator Economy Database for an exclusive list of private companies and their investors. Meta is training its AI chat-bots to send unprompted messages to users, according to a report from Business Insider. A Meta spokesperson confirmed the company is testing follow up messaging in their AI Studio, a feature on Messenger, Instagram and Whatsapp that allows people to create an AI character or extension of themselves. Once the feature goes live, in order to be eligible to receive messages, users must have sent at least five messages to an AI character in the last 14 days. Gener8, a London-based start-up that allows users to track their data online and earn rewards like gift cards for sharing it with advertisers, just launched in the U.S. It has raised just under $13 million, according to PitchBook. A police department in Maine apologized this week after posting to Facebook a photo containing evidence of a drug bust that was altered by ChatGPT. Police Captain Steven Goldberg told local media that an officer used the technology to add the department’s patch, or logo, in the background of the photo, not realizing that the application changed the drugs and packaging significantly. TV executive Alex Piper, who had stints at NBC, ABC News and Fox, is now back at YouTube as Executive Producer of Sports and Creator Content, according to his LinkedIn. He was most recently executive vice president of original content for the NBA’s NBA Take Two show. Because Tesla’s launch of its robotaxis in Austin has been limited, many people are getting first looks of the experience through YouTube influencers like Dave Lee and Ellie in Space. In the videos, safety drivers sit in the front passenger seat and have been filmed intervening when the robotaxis run into trouble. In one video, Tesla support is seen contacting a rider to end the trip early due to incoming rain. Thank you for reading the Creator Economy Newsletter! I’d love your feedback, ideas and tips: kaya@theinformation.com. If you think someone else might enjoy this newsletter, please pass it forward or they can sign up here: https://www.theinformation.com/newsletters/creator-economy |