Amazon Opens Limited Preview of TBC's Rat-Brain AI Video Model

Amazon Web Services has begun offering select customers access to a limited preview of The Biological Computing Company's "rat brain" AI model, which is designed to improve video generation. Both Amazon and TBC, as the Baltimore-based startup is known, expect the technology to reach all AWS enterprise customers soon.

TBC cofounder Alexander Ksendzovsky says the company codes information, such as images, into biological material, observes how it processes that information, and builds a tool that mimics the process. AWS global director of technology for startups Deap Ubhi says TBC takes a pragmatic approach, working within existing generative AI standards to make visual models more efficient rather than trying to reinvent the transformer.

TBC was founded four years ago by two neuroscientists and neurosurgeons, Ksendzovsky and Jon Pomeraniec. It raised $25 million earlier this year in a round led by Primary Venture Partners, then secured an additional $25 million shortly after the round closed in March, bringing its total funding to more than $50 million. That second round has not been previously reported. Last year the company opened offices and a small R&D lab in San Francisco, where 35 employees work with rat brain cells and human stem cells.

The startup claims its AI model is up to five times faster at video generation than the open-source model it runs on and significantly lowers inference costs. TBC previously made its technology available through Bluesky Compute. Ubhi says it remains to be seen how well the technology scales, asking whether improvements will hold if customers push it to generate longer videos.

Source: Wired