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Netcore Acquires Quinto.ai an AI Chatbot Start-up

10Apr By AnkitaNo Comments

ACQUISITION

Netcore Acquires Quinto.ai an AI Chatbot Start-up

MNetcore Solutions, a Global Marketing technology company, has acquired Quinto.ai, an AI chatbot start-up. With the IP and talent acquisition, Netcore gets access to Quinto's conversational AI-powered chatbot engine and its employees. Quinto’s co-founder Hrishikesh Rajpathak also joins Netcore as Chief Data Scientist and will lead its Machine Learning and Conversation Analytics initiatives. Hrishikesh comes with over 12 years of experience in Machine Learning, Deep Learning, and Natural Language Processing (NLP) technologies. Founded 4 years back, Quinto is a food recommendation platform which later pivoted to a conversational AI platform. Quinto enables businesses to automate conversations with customers and improve customer experience. Businesses across verticals can use ...

McDonald’s Acquires AI startup Dynamic Yield in a $300 million deal

9Apr By AdityaNo Comments

ACQUISITION

McDonald’s Acquires AI startup Dynamic Yield in a $300 million deal

McDonald’s Corporation (McD) has acquired an AI-based startup Dynamic Yield in a $300 million deal. Dynamic Yield is a leader in personalization and decision logic technology. With this acquisition of Dynamic Yield, McDonald’s builds on its first technology acquisition for growth. McDonald’s will utilize this decision technology to provide an even more personalized customer experience by varying outdoor digital Drive Thru menu displays to show food based on time of day, weather, current restaurant traffic and trending menu items. The decision technology can also instantly suggest and display additional items to a customer’s order based on their current selections. This will enable McDonald’s to be one of the first companies to integrate decision technology into the custome...

230 Crore Deal: Reliance Jio Acquires Haptik

3Apr By PriyankaNo Comments

ACQUISITION

230 Crore Deal: Reliance Jio Acquires Haptik

Reliance Jio a subsidiary of Mukesh Ambani led Reliance Industries acquires AI based platform Haptik in 230 crores. After the acquisition Reliance jio will invest 470 crores in the further operation. The Haptik team will continue to drive growth of the business, including the enterprise platform as well as digital consumer assistants. On a fully diluted basis Reliance will hold about 87% of the business with the rest being held by Haptik founders and employees through stock option grants. This transaction enables Reliance Jio to leverage Haptik’s capabilities across various devices and touch points in the consumer’s journey. The investment focus is on enhancement and expansion of the platform, with an addressable market opportunity of over 1 billion users in India. This partnersh...

24Mar By PriyankaNo Comments

FUNDING

FrontdeskAI Raises Additional $2 Million Seed Funding from Pi Ventures

PALO ALTO, Calif.-- FrontdeskAI, the leading developer of artificial intelligence (AI) assistants for small businesses, and the fastest adopted AI assistant in the wellness market, raises an additional $2 million in seed funding, bringing its total seed funding to $4.2 million. This round of seed funding was led by pi Ventures, an India based VC fund, and will help FrontdeskAI accelerate product development, increase customer acquisition and investigate new vertical markets. Previous seed rounds include $1.1 million in June 2018, led by Blue Pointe Capital, and $1.1 million in November 2018, led by Speciale Invest. pi Ventures partner, Abishek Surendran, will join the FrontdeskAI board which includes BluePointe Ventures managing partner, Sandeep Sardana, and Speciale Invest managin...

7Mar By AdityaNo Comments

Tech

Apple acquires patents from Lighthouse, an AI home security camera startup

Apple is looking to upgrade Face ID in its upcoming phones and devices and has acquired patents of an AI security camera company, Lighthouse. Apple reportedly bought the patent portfolio of the company at the end of 2018, reported The Verge. The patents acquired by Apple largely deal with using computer vision to scan and recognise faces, which may mean that the company might upgrade Face ID in its upcoming devices. If those sound familiar, it’s because Lighthouse’s patents describe technology that’s quite similar to what Apple uses for Face ID on its iPhone XS and XR devices. It is possible that Apple is looking to use Lighthouse’s technology to advance Face ID further, maybe, in a version for a computer that would benefit from Lighthouse’s ability to tell...

9Dec By AnkitaNo Comments

FUNDING

With over 2 Million Subscribers, Japan’s AI based App raises $26.43 Million Series E Funding

Sansan, Inc., the parent company of the Eight app, Japan's leading business card organizer and professional social networking platform has raised approx. Rs. 186 crores (USD 26.43 million) in Series-E funding, taking funding to date to approx. Rs. 7,050 crores (USD 100 million). Sansan's Series E investment was led by Japan Post Capital, T. Rowe Price, SBI Investment, and DCM Ventures. The additional funding will help Sansan deliver on its new mission: "Turning encounters into innovation." The company aims to accelerate its development of innovative technologies centered around maximizing the utility of business cards. Eight is Japan's largest professional social networking platform. The app has well over 2 million registered users. The Eight app uses Artificial Intelligence (AI)...

1Dec By Gauri SinghNo Comments

CHINA

China’s AI Startup is Helping 280 Hospitals Worldwide Detect Cancers from Images

Beijing-based AI startup Infervision is among a handful of AI companies around the world racing to improve medical imaging analysis through deep learning, the same technology that powers face recognition and autonomous driving. The startup, which has to date raised $70 million from leading investors like Sequoia Capital China, began by picking out cancerous lung cells, a prevalent cause of death in China. At the Radiological Society of North America’s annual conference in Chicago this week, the three-year-old company announced extending its computer vision prowess to other chest-related conditions like cardiac calcification. “By adding more scenarios under which our AI works, we are able to offer more help to doctors,” Chen Kuan, founder and chief executive officer of Infervision state...

Shanghai and Baidu Enter an Agreement Focusing AI Development

28Nov By Gauri SinghNo Comments

CHINA

Shanghai and Baidu Enter an Agreement Focusing AI Development

The Shanghai municipal government and Chinese technology major Baidu have reportedly signed a strategic cooperation agreement for the purpose of developing artificial intelligence (AI) industry in the city and giving it a boost. Following the agreement, a Baidu innovation center will be built to make Shanghai a major AI development center. The company will also help Shanghai in building smart city. Shanghai has talent from home and abroad and is open to the world, which provides a conducive environment for the company's future development, said Robin Li, chairman and CEO of Baidu. "Baidu will increase its research and development investment, land more new modes, applications and products in Shanghai so as to make bigger contributions to the AI industry development and mega-city mana...

Microsoft Acquires an Austin-based Software Developer

15Nov By Gauri SinghNo Comments

ACQUISITION

Microsoft Acquires an Austin-based Software Developer

The international technology giant Microsoft has reportedly acquired an Austin-based software developer called Xoxco. This acquisition has marked the fourth AI-related company Microsoft has purchased this year. Founded in 2009, Xoxco has raised $1.5 million. It began working on bots in 2013, and is credited with developing the first bot for Slack to help schedule meetings. However, the financial details of the deal have not been disclosed. “Today, we are announcing we have signed an agreement to acquire Xoxco, a software product design and development studio known for its conversational AI and bot development capabilities,” Lili Cheng stated. With this move, Microsoft is continuing to realize our approach of democratizing AI development, conversation and dialog, and integrating conver...

12Nov By Gauri SinghNo Comments

CHINA

China’s AI Industry has Embraced Growth

China's AI industry has embraced rapid growth in recent five years. China's large population created advantages in big data, which is the key driver for AI ecology today represented by deep learning. "At the basic scientific level, there is still a gap between China and the United States. While at the application level, China is able to become the world's leading experimenter," Wang said. Beijing-based Sogou, which went public on the New York Stock Exchange in November last year, runs China's most popular input method and the second-largest search engine and Sogou browser. Sogou's language-centered AI technologies have been widely applied in providing daily and simultaneous interpretation services in various scenarios. Sogou launched the world's first virtual anchor technology on t...

Walmart Plans to Launch Intelligent Retail Lab in New York

10Nov By Gauri SinghNo Comments

News

Walmart Plans to Launch Intelligent Retail Lab in New York

The retail giant Walmart has announced its plans to roll out an Intelligent Retail Lab inside one of its stores in Levittown, New York. The basic ideas behind this is to test both associate and customer experiences. With this, the company wants to use artificial intelligence to better identify when items are running low on stock so that it can proactively replenish the stock. This would be led by an internal team called Kepler. Also, the retailer is planning to use the technology to identify spills, better understand when shopping carts are running low near the entrance and identify when items are on the wrong shelf. It has also been stated that Project Kepler would entail cashierlesss stores. However, the company mentioned that Kepler is the name of the team building the AI lab i...

Singapore-based AnyMind Raises $13.4 Million for Expansion

29Oct By Gauri SinghNo Comments

FUNDING

Singapore-based AnyMind Raises $13.4 Million for Expansion

A Singapore-based AI company AnyMind Group has secured funds amounting to $13.4 million in a funding round. This round was led by Line, the Japanese messaging app firm, and Mirai Creation Fund, which is backed by Toyota among others. The company that uses AI in online advertising, HR and marketing is planning to use these funds for its growth in Japan and other Asian markets. Other backers such as JAFCO and Dream Incubator also took part in this round. AnyMind uses AI to offer ad solutions to publishers and advertisers and also to its newer businesses TalentMind (HR) and CastingAsia, influencer marketing. Founded in April 2016 by Kosuke Sogo and Otohiko Kozutsumi the company claims to be profitable since early 2017. It said total revenue for 2017 was $26 million, up from $12.9 millio...