Join our daily and weekly newsletters for the latest updates and exclusive content on industry-leading AI coverage. Learn More. In an increasingly uncertain global market, product and growth leaders have a greater effect than ever on a company’s success, impacting not only business growth, but making business transformation possible. Amplitude’s Product 50 Awards were launched as a way to recognize and celebrate product and growth leaders globally whose innovation and creativity are shaking up their companies, disrupting their industries and changing the world.Selecting the Product 50Now in its third year, the Product 50 call for nominees garnered nearly 600 nominations across ten categories, and the final list of nominees and winners represents nine countries across four continents. From each of the ten categories, leaders were selected by a panel of industry judges:. Francois Ajenstat, Chief Product Officer, Amplitude Sara Rossio, Chief Product Officer, G2Carlos Gonzalez de Villaumbrosia, Founder CEO, Product SchoolAdrienne Tan, Co-founder CEO, BrainmatesTimo Dechau, Founder, Deepskydata

Join our daily and weekly newsletters for the latest updates and exclusive content on industry-leading AI coverage. Learn More. Graphics processing units (GPUs), the expensive computer chips made by the likes of Nvidia, AMD and Sima.ai, are no longer the only way to train and deploy artificial intelligence.Biological Black Box (BBB), a Baltimore-founded startup developing a new class of AI hardware, has emerged from stealth with its Bionode platform—a computing system that integrates living, lab-grown neurons with traditional processors. The company, which has been operating quietly while filing patents and refining its technology, believes its biological computing approach — growing new neurons specifically to act as computer chips using donor human stem cells and rat-derived cells — could offer a low-power, adaptive alternative to conventional GPUs.“Over the last 20 years, three independent fields—biology, hardware, and computational tools—have advanced to the point where biological computing is now possible,” said Alex Ksendzovsky, BBB’s co-founder and CEO, in a video call interview with VentureBeat.A member of Nvidia’s Inception incubator, BBB is positioning itself as an advancement and augmentation to the dominant silicon-based AI chips that Nvidia and others produce. By leveraging neurons’ ability to physically rewire themselves, the company aims to reduce energy costs, improve processing efficiency, and accelerate AI model training—challenges that have become increasingly urgent as AI adoption expands.This isn’t sci-fi, despite the incredible premise: BBB’s neural chips are already powering computer vision and LLMs for customers, and have entered talks with two partners to license its tech for computer vision apps — though the company declined to name its customers and partners specifically, citing confidentiality agreements. It is accepting inquiries from prospective partners and clients, as well, on its website.Blending biology and hardwareAt the core of BBB’s approach is the Bionode platform, which uses lab-grown neurons wired into computing systems.“We have multiple models that we use,” Ksendzovsky told me