NEW YORK - eTradeWire -- The world has seen a new advances in Artificial Intelligence capabilities, but building systems today with AI still involves a lot of  complicated and manual engineering for each well-defined task.

In today's episode of "StartUp Scoop", OpenAI pushes forward with its mission that AGI should "benefit all of humanity", Robinhood expands access to financial systems, and Thumbtack pushes hard to support the backbone of the American economy.

In our lead story, OpenAI has received a whopping $1 Billion Investment from Microsoft. OpenAI's mission is pushing the boundaries of AGI.

AGI is a system capable of mastering a field of study to the world-expert level, and mastering more fields than any one human. For example, An AGI working on a problem would be able to see connections across disciplines that no human could.

"We think AGI's impact should be to give everyone economic freedom to pursue what they find most fulfilling, creating new opportunities for all of our lives that are unimaginable today" said the company.

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But make no mistake, Microsoft is betting big that AGI will have economic benefits. The companies are developing hardware and software platforms within Microsoft Azure which will scale to AGI including supercomputing technologies.

Check out "Startup Scoop" on YouTube (https://youtu.be/O440vCcwBPU)



In other news, Robinhood, a Menlo Park, California-based platform to invest in stocks, ETFs, options, and cryptocurrencies, from a phone or desktop, raised $323M in Series E funding.

"We're focused on building products and services that expand access to our financial system" commented the company.

The $323M Series E financing gives the company a $7.6B valuation. This round was led by DST Global.

"We'll use the funding to keep pursuing our mission of democratizing finance for all" said Robinhood.

Meanwhile, Thumbtack, a San Francisco, California-based local services marketplace that connects consumers to professionals across the country has raised $150M in funding led by existing investor Sequoia Capital.

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"We're focused on bringing more customers to the backbone of the American economy – small businesses," said Marco Zappacosta, CEO of Thumbtack. "Today's investment will allow us to accelerate our efforts to create the tools and infrastructure needed to empower small businesses to run and grow their businesses."

This most recent financing will enable Thumbtack to continue to invest in growth, accelerating the expansion of its platform and investing in products and pro tool.

Here's a quick run through the rest of the headlines (courtesy of FINSMES):
• WattBuy raised $1.2M in seed funding
• Ocuphire Pharma has closed on over $5m financing.
• Homeward secured $25M in initial funding
• UVeye has raised an additional $31M in funding.
• DEARhealth closed out its Series A funding round.
• LYV Lifer received an investment from Balance Point Capital

"Startup Scoop" is produced by TVP in New York City, and sponsored by RestonLogic