Jun 19, 2023

Share The founder of Australian healthcare artificial intelligence start-up Maxwell Plus said he has watched with dismay as hype in the area has reached fever pitch this year, with figures showing it went bust just before a funding boom in the sector. Two years ago, Brisbane-based Elliot Smith was forced to shutter his six-year-old AI prostate cancer screening start-up, Maxwell Plus, after a series of investors knocked back his pitches for fresh funding. Maxwell Plus had built an AI-powered business but investors weren’t as interested two years ago. iStock “We just missed out on the hype cycle,” Mr Smith said. “We were too early, I suppose. We were working directly with patients through a virtual clinic, which didn’t click with investors then. Now telehealth is clearly a growing market and add to that the AI hype now, and it just didn’t align for us.” Maxwell Plus ran its AI analysis over thousands of prostate cancer images, delivering otherwise undetected cancer results to patients. The team, which was around 15 people at the business’ close, were certain AI could improve the diagnoses for patients and be a powerful tool for doctors, but investors didn’t bite. Advertisement Fast forward a matter of months after the company closed and the same strategy of applying AI to analyse enormous swathes of data across an ever-growing array of industries, is the very thing that is inflating valuations and sending the US benchmark S&P500 into a technical bull market . According to CB Insights, $US123.7 billion of venture funding has been tipped into AI start-ups between 2021 and now. Last month, US-based chip manufacturer Nvidia told investors its sales would beat expectations by more than 50 per cent, thanks to the global interest in AI which underpins the popular ChatGPT bot. So far this year, the stock has powered 192 per cent higher. This enthusiasm has spilled over to corporates which are rushing to plough money into new AI-based systems that will eke out productivity gains, or augment their products to deliver AI-based services to customers. Last week, consulting giant Accenture also announced it will invest $US4.4 billion in AI to accelerate its client’s digital transformation programs, and Google searches for “AI” have more than doubled from 17 million in January 2023 to 42 million in May. Heavyweight technology darlings including Google-parent Alphabet, Microsoft, Nvidia, Adobe, and Facebook-owner Meta have all jumped as investors bet the companies can build more valuable products using AI. Advertisement “It’s kind of amazing to see everyone talking about AI now,” Mr Elliot said. “They definitely weren’t talking about it this way two years ago. Like most hype-driven technologies, we’ll probably see lots of start-ups raising fresh money on an idea, but expectations are pretty high at the moment.” Jessica Sier writes on technology, internet culture, cryptocurrencies and software from our Sydney newsroom. She has previously covered global capital markets and economics. Connect with Jessica on Twitter . Email Jessica at jessica.sier@afr.com Save