This year has been big, momentous for Grammarly, the AI–based grammar and writing assistant startup.

In January, its ads went viral after a user posted a tongue-in-cheek dance, inspiring tens of thousands of TikToks. And now, as the year winds down, the company raised $200 million—at a $13 billion valuation, making it the No. 10 most valuable startup in the nation.

Underneath the company’s soaring valuation is a layered system of AI and natural language processing (NLP)—specifically tools like large language models, machine learning (ML), rules engines, and 12 years of user feedback—that it uses to make suggestions to its reported 30+ million users.

How it works

When Grammarly started out in 2009, it focused more on correcting the most common grammatical errors. Now, it offers edits on everything from tone and inclusive-language suggestions to conciseness and clarity.

• After a user writes an email, for example, the text is run through a “neural machine translation” process, according to the company, to generate a first take on potential changes.
• Then everything is fed into large language models, which use those initial results to try to draft the edited version of the text.
• After that, rules engines take a crack at the sentence—think: natural language processing rules about how the language works—before the final suggestions are shown to the user.

“We can say, ‘Okay, the output that the ML model created—does that actually make sense, or does it need to be tweaked a bit?’” Rahul Roy-Chowdhury, Grammarly’s global head of product, told us.

“ML doesn’t always get it right. ML models are notoriously, sometimes, really bad...making bad mistakes. Sometimes it makes mistakes. So we layer on our knowledge of language models and NLP to fix it,” he said.

And instead of combining the whole English language into one especially large language model, each aspect of language that Grammarly edits for—for example, tone, empathy, inclusive language, clarity, conciseness, and correctness—has its own machine learning “ecosystem,” Roy-Chowdhury explained.

Looking ahead...Grammarly says it will invest some of the $200 million it just raised in advancing user trust and personalization.

Click here to read the full story.—HF

Another week, another delivery-focused emerging tech company coming to Northwest Arkansas. Zipline, a San Francisco–based drone delivery company, announced a new partnership with Walmart yesterday, following a pilot last fall.

Like all US drone delivery partnerships right now, the scope is limited: Zipline will service one store and one rural community in Pea Ridge, Arkansas. It’ll focus on health and wellness products, and—as is the case with most drones flying in the US—its aircraft must stay within a human’s line of sight.

• Zipline has other US operations in North Carolina and Utah, but it primarily works in Rwanda and Ghana. To date, Zipline says its autonomous drones have made 210,000 commercial deliveries across five countries.
• The company raised a $250 million Series E in June, and is valued at $2.75 billion.

Zipline CTO and cofounder Keenan Wyrobek told us the company’s distribution centers have, on average, 25 drones in operation, with some fluctuations depending on delivery volume. That number can support 150 flights per day, he said.

• Zipline declined to share specific numbers around the Walmart partnership, but it plans to further expand in the region of northwest Arkansas, subject to FAA approval.
• Axios reports that Zipline’s drones can carry ~4 pounds, and deliver to customers within 30 minutes of an order.

Looking ahead...Wyrobeck said that “what’s exciting now is the growth—we’ve actually gotten good at things in a pretty limited setting, so now it’s about scaling with new partners.”

But for now, that scaling up is likely to take place across countries in Africa, where he said a generally strong product-market fit and clear regulatory frameworks make it more efficient to grow.

Click here to read the full-story.—DM

For many industries—even some of the most traditional ones—automation became a go-to solution to supply-chain slowdowns, labor shortages, and cash-flow issues over the past two years.

And the rise of robotics doesn’t seem to be slowing down any time soon. Robot sales in North America hit an all-time high in Q3 of this year, with ~29,000 units sold in the first 9 months of the year—and a $1.48 billion total value.

• That’s a spike of 37% in number of units over the same period last year, and 35% in value, year-over-year, according to new Association for Advancing Automation data.

Case in point: The manufacturing sector is rebounding, according to the latest jobs report...with significantly fewer open positions than pre-pandemic, NBC News reported. That may be partly due to manufacturers further embracing automation and the recent surge in industrial robots, as well as the ongoing labor shortage.

It’s a market worth ~$43.8 billion in 2021—and projected to surpass $70 billion by 2028 at the rate it’s growing.

For a deeper dive on the robosphere, click here to view our new guide to robotics.—HF

Stat: Here’s a three-for-one from Nvidia’s Q3 earnings: 1) Its data-center sales jumped 55% year over year, to $2.9 billion 2) Its valuation topped $800 billion on Thursday, putting it right behind Meta 3) Its execs used the term “omniverse” 36 times on the earnings call.

Quote: “There’s clearly benefits. The problem is if you’re literally giving away a lot of those benefits to land the company.”—Nathan Jensen, a professor at the University of Texas–Austin, re: US cities’ efforts to lure semiconductor plants

Read: Time released its Top 100 Best Innovations of 2021.

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Three of the following news stories are true, and one...we made up. Can you spot the odd one out?

• Hello Kitty released an NFT.
• There’s a solar industry satire site called The Sunion.
• Chuck E. Cheese is going all-in on the metaverse.
• A company that makes semiconductor-making tools can’t get enough semiconductors to make its semiconductor-making tools.

We spend a lot of time writing about what experts think of AI, but what about the average US adult? A new survey from Stevens Institute of Technology and Morning Consult dug into that question.

Rapid-fire results:

• Overall, almost half (48%) of respondents think the benefits of further AI adoption outweigh the negatives.
• Almost three-quarters (74%) of respondents said they’re somewhat or very concerned about AI eroding personal privacy, while 72% said the same of irresponsible use of AI, 71% are concerned about fewer job opportunities.
• More than half (52%) of adults think it’s likely AI will become smarter than humans. Good news: That ain’t happening any time soon.

Catch up on the top Emerging Tech Brew stories from the past few editions:

• Tucked away in the $1 trillion infrastructure bill is $500 million for smart-city projects
• Meet the group trying to build a Noah’s Ark for threatened species’ DNA
• Soon, your car may be able to power your house—here’s why that matters