Zoom to acquire Conversational AI startup Solvvy

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May 14, 2022

Communication platform providing company Zoom to acquire conversational AI and automation startup Solvvy.

Zoom plans to use Solvvy’s expertise to offer the best possible customer service to a worldwide company base and move rapidly to seize new contact centers and customer support possibilities.

However, neither company revealed any information regarding the valuation of this recently signed acquisition deal.

The acquisition is a step for the company to further strengthen its newly launched Zoom Contact Center, which aims to redefine the industry using a unique combination of unified communications and customer experience, and Zoom believes that Solvvy’s team can help them achieve its goal.

President of Product and Engineering at Zoom, Velchamy Sankarlingam, said, “The nature of customer experience is transforming fundamentally, as enterprises increasingly need to deliver exceptional, personalized, and effortless customer experiences. Solvvy understands this shift and is the ideal platform to enhance our Zoom Contact Center offering.”

He further added that Solvvy’s differentiated AI and machine learning technology, deep talent team, and a simple-to-deploy solution would aid in accelerating their roadmap to providing concierge-level service to consumers around the world.

Moreover, Zoom recently launched its artificial intelligence-powered solution called ZoomIQ, which focused on assisting organizations’ sales teams. The AI-enabled tool can be used to analyze sales meanings and leads to generate actionable insights, helping sales teams to make better data-driven decisions.

United States-based machine learning startup Solvvy was founded by Justin Betteridge, Mahesh Ram, and Mehdi Samadi in 2013. It is best known for its Solvvy for Support solution that provides a superior self-service platform that boosts customer happiness while lowering expenses. To date, the startup has raised more than $16 million from investors like Scale Venture Partners, True Ventures, and others over two funding rounds.

“Zoom’s Contact Center brings the same level of scalability, simplicity, and respect for the end-user, making Zoom the premier communications platform for businesses worldwide. When combined with our modern tech stack, talented team, and AI expertise, we believe we can fundamentally transform the customer experience,” said CEO and Co-founder of Solvvy, Mahesh Ram.

He also mentioned that Zoom’s substantial technical knowledge, industry-leading platform, and worldwide reach would allow them to expand their influence on existing customers while also serving new ones.

Google launches LaMDA 2 and AI Test Kitchen

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Dipayan Mitra

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May 13, 2022

Technology giant Google launched its new language model named LaMDA 2 and an app called AI Test Kitchen to showcase the capabilities of LaMDA 2.

Meet LaMDA. Advances in natural language understanding are making it possible for us to build even more conversational AI. #GoogleIO pic.twitter.com/HJ8FgHtbFp
— Google (@Google) May 18, 2021

This announcement was recently made by the company’s CEO Sundar Pichai during the Google I/O 2022 event.

LaMDA 2 (Language Model for Dialog Applications) is the second generation of LaMDA, built on a neural network architecture that Google Research invented and open-sourced in 2017.

Google claims that LaMDA 2 is an artificial intelligence system designed for dialogue applications, which can understand millions of topics and generate natural conversations that never repeat generated texts.

Pichai said, “We are continuing to advance our conversational capabilities. Conversation and natural language processing (NLP) are powerful ways to make computers more accessible to everyone. Large language models are key to this.”

Moreover, the AI Test Kitchen application can effectively showcase what Google’s new LaMDA 2 can do. The app allows users to interact with and provide feedback on some of Google’s most recent AI technologies. Interested candidates can visit the official website of Google to check out the AI Test Kitchen.

Though LaMDA is yet not perfect, Google has made substantial improvements in safety and accuracy in the latest version of LaMDA. The AI Test Kitchen offers three demos that demonstrate the capabilities of LaMDA. The demos involve a tool that asks the app to help users imagine various scenarios, a demonstration of the model capable of staying on a topic, and a demo of LaMDA having complex conversations.

“These experiences show the potential of language models to one day help us with things like planning, learning about the world, and more,” added Pichai.

NetApp and NVIDIA to Accelerate HPC and AI with Turnkey Supercomputing Infrastructure

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Dipayan Mitra

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May 13, 2022

Global data-centric software company NetApp partners with NVIDIA to accelerate high-performance computing (HPC) and artificial intelligence (AI) with Turnkey supercomputing infrastructure.

NetApp announced that its NetApp EF600 all-flash NVMe storage combined with the BeeGFS parallel file system is now certified for NVIDIA DGX SuperPOD. This development further simplifies AI and HPC to enable faster implementation of use cases.

Organizations can now create AI Centers of Excellence by combining the capability of DGX SuperPOD on-premises with NetApp storage.

The qualification of NetApp EF600 and BeeGFS file systems for DGX SuperPOD is the latest addition to the company’s growing portfolio of AI solutions.

Vice President of Solutions and Alliances at NetApp, Phil Brotherton, said, “The NetApp and NVIDIA alliance has delivered industry-leading innovation for years, and this new qualification for NVIDIA DGX SuperPOD builds on that momentum.”

He further added that as performance and data demands grow, NVIDIA DGX SuperPOD, in conjunction with the ONTAP AI platform and the DGX Foundry AI service, ensures that the customers receive the best-in-class model training infrastructure.

According to NetApp, its range of NVIDIA-powered solutions includes ONTAP AI, which uses a field-proven reference architecture and a preconfigured, integrated solution that is easy to acquire and deploy.

“Organizations modernizing their business with AI and HPC need performance, flexibility, and choice as they architect their infrastructure,” said Vice President of DGX systems at NVIDIA, Charlie Boyle.

He also mentioned that customers building their own AI Centers of Excellence may now choose NetApp storage for their NVIDIA DGX SuperPOD and use the same leading platform offered as hosted infrastructure through NVIDIA DGX Foundry, thanks to their partnership with NetApp.

Apple sues Chip startup Rivos for stealing Trade Secrets

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Dipayan Mitra

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May 13, 2022

Smartphone manufacturing giant Apple sues chip manufacturing startup Rivos for allegedly stealing the company’s trade secrets.

The lawsuit has been filed in the United States against Rivos and two other individuals for theft and contract breach. There has been controversy around the corner of Rivos hiring multiple Apple’s top engineers and Apple claims that Rivero also stole the company chipset trading secrets along with employees.

According to Apple, during its final days at Apple, some staff removed gigabytes of crucial SoC specifications and design data after accepting jobs at Rivos. Ex-Apple employees are accused of stealing information by using USB drives and AirDrop to transfer confidential Apple data to their personal devices.

Moreover, Apple says that the employees also stole presentations of unreleased SoCs and saved them in their cloud accounts.

The Lawsuit against Rivos mentioned, “Apple’s cutting-edge, advanced system-on-chip (“SoC”) designs, including its M1 Laptop SoC and A15 mobile phone SoC, have revolutionized the personal and mobile computing worlds.”

The case also highlighted that Apple has spent billions of dollars and more than a decade developing the exclusive technology and skills required to engineer these ground-breaking SoC architectures and establish itself as a leader in the semiconductor design sector.

Apple claims that the former Apple employees who were reportedly involved in data theft attempted to erase the evidence by wiping their Apple devices.

”Between July 26, 2021 and July 29, 2021, Mr. Wen transferred approximately 390 gigabytes from his Apple-issued computer to a personal external hard drive. Among the data transferred are confidential Apple documents describing Apple trade secrets, including aspects of the microarchitecture for Apple’s past, current, and unreleased SoCs,” says Apple.

Google unveils 10-shade skin tone scale to Identify AI Bias

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Dipayan Mitra

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May 12, 2022

Global technology giant Google unveils its new 10-shade skin tone scale to better identify bias in artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms.

According to Google, this new development will help build gadgets and applications that offer unbiased services to everyone.

Google’s new Monk Skin Tone Scale replaces the Fitzpatrick Skin Type, flawed six-color criteria that had gained popularity in the tech industry. The Fitzpatrick Skin Type has been in use to determine multiple offerings of gadgets for color bias.

Google partnered with sociologist Ellis Monk of Harvard University, who studies colorism, to develop and launch the Monk Skin Tone Scale. Monk has spent more than a decade researching how skin tone and colorism affect people’s lives.

Head of Product for Responsible AI and Product Inclusion in Search at Google, Tulsee Doshi, said, “The culmination of Dr. Monk’s research is the Monk Skin Tone (MST) Scale, a 10-shade scale that will be incorporated into various Google products over the coming months. We’re openly releasing the scale so anyone can use it for research and product development.”

She further added that they want the scale to promote inclusive goods and research across the industry, and they see this as an opportunity to collaborate, learn, and improve their work with others’ help.

Google claims that its research found that the new Monk Skin Tone Scale better represents the skin color of the participants in the United States when compared to other available skin tone scales in the market.

“In our research, we found that a lot of the time, people feel they’re lumped into racial categories, but there’s all this heterogeneity with ethnic and racial categories,” said Dr. Monk. He also mentioned that many classification systems, including previous skin tone scales, ignore this variability, which leads to a lack of representation. Developers and researchers can share their feedback about Monk Skin Tone Scale to Google from its official website.

Coinbase warns investors may lose their Crypto Holdings if company goes Bankrupt

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Dipayan Mitra

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May 12, 2022

Online cryptocurrency platform Coinbase warns its investors that they may lose all of their crypto holdings if the company goes bankrupt in the future.

This news surfaced just after the company’s first-quarter earnings report got revealed. Moreover, Coinbase also recently witnessed a 27% decline in its share prices.

The havoc was caused after the Securities and Exchange Commission of the United States released a filing that expressed the views of the staff regarding the accounting for obligations to safeguard crypto-assets an entity holds for platform users.

“Because custodially held crypto assets may be considered to be the property of a bankruptcy estate, in the event of a bankruptcy, the crypto assets we hold in custody on behalf of our customers could be subject to bankruptcy proceedings, and such customers could be treated as our general unsecured creditors,” said the filing.

1/ There is some noise about a disclosure we made in our 10Q today about how we hold crypto assets. Tl;dr: Your funds are safe at Coinbase, just as they’ve always been.
— Brian Armstrong – barmstrong.eth (@brian_armstrong) May 11, 2022

The crypto industry erupted after this event, and the CEO of Coinbase, Brian Armstrong, had to come up on Twitter with a series of Tweets to normalize the situation. “We have no risk of bankruptcy, however, we included a new risk factor based on an SEC requirement called SAB 121, which is a newly required disclosure for public companies that hold crypto-assets for third parties,” Brain mentioned in a Tweet.

He further added that even in a black swan occurrence like this, he believes the company’s prime and custody customers have strong legal protections in their terms of service that protect their assets. Coinbase says that it holds $256 billion in cryptocurrencies and fiat money on behalf of its customers.

Salesforce acquires Automation Platform Troops.ai

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Dipayan Mitra

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May 12, 2022

Customer Relationship Management platform providing company Salesforce acquires automation platform Troops.ai.

Neither company revealed any information regarding the valuation of this acquisition deal. However, the contract is expected to close in the second quarter of Salesforce’s fiscal year 2023 and is subject to customary closing conditions.

Troops will join the team of Slack, a Salesforce subsidiary, following the closure. Salesforce plans to integrate Troops.ai’s high-end technology with Slack to provide better features to its customers.

“The Troops team has spent more than seven years designing tools that deliver real-time insights from systems of record like Salesforce to systems of engagement like Slack, bringing together the information and actions that customer-facing teams need to close new deals and support existing customers,” mentioned Salesforce in a release.

United States-based provider of a revenue communications solution Troops.ai was founded by Dan Reich, Greg Ratner, and Scott Britton in 2015. According to the company’s listing on Salesforce’s AppExchange, Troops provides a platform for delivering revenue signals and actions from Salesforce to Slack and Microsoft Teams.

Troops allow users to push and pull CRM data into and out of Slack, transforming it into a sales hub for teams. To date, Troops.ai has raised more than $19 million from multiple investors like First RoundCapital, Founder Collective, Next View Ventures, Great Oaks Capital, Chicago Ventures, Vast Ventures, and others over four funding rounds.

“Since that time, we’ve been a leader in the industry, working with some of the fastest-growing companies in the world, including Salesforce and Slack. We’ve done this by delivering real-time insights from systems of record like Salesforce to systems of engagement like Slack, bringing together information and actions that customer-facing teams need to close new deals and support existing customers,” said the Co-founder of Troops.ai, Dan Reich.

He also mentioned that this announcement marks a significant turning point in the Troops’ journey, and they would want to express their gratitude to their community, valued customers, partners, investors, and team for their continued support.

IIT Guwahati develops technology to design fast and secure ICs for next-generation computing

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Dipayan Mitra

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May 12, 2022

Researchers at the Automation, Verification and Security (AVS) Lab at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Guwahati, develops secure and dependable integrated circuits (ICs) for faster and efficient computing.

The research looks at all aspects of the automated electronics design process like synthesis, verification and security, and contributes towards strengthening the electronics manufacturing ecosystem in our country.

The findings have been published in top tier journals and conferences of IEEE. The research team is funded by ECR, CRG and Interdisciplinary Cyber-Physical Systems (ICPS) grants from the Department of Science & Technology, Govt. of India and by a Research Fellowship from Intel (India).

With the Government of India’s recent approval of the Rs 76,000-crore scheme to boost semiconductor manufacturing in the country, efficient EDA aids such as those designed by the IIT Guwahati team will support and promote self-sufficiency in chip design.

The paper has been authored by Dr. Chandan Karfa, Associate Professor, Department of Computer Science & Engineering, IIT Guwahati and co-authored his research students Mr Mohammed Abderehman, Mr. Debebdara Senapati, Mr Surajit Das, Ms Priyanka Panigrahi and Ms Nilotpola Sarma.

Some alumni who contributed to these endeavors are Ramanuj Chouksey, Jay Oza, Yom Nigam, Abdul Khader, and Jayprakash Patidar. The team has collaborated with various international experts. Dr. Chandan Karfa is also the recipient of the Qualcomm Faculty Award 2021.

IIT Guwahati team emphasize on hardware acceleration specifications that are often written in high-level languages like in C/C++ and are converted to hardware code (or register transfer level or Register−Transfer Level (RTL code), in a process called High-Level Synthesis (HLS).

Due to the complex conversation process, HLS translation may introduce bugs in the design and therefore stringent validation steps are required. The RTL simulators are used to validate HLS, but these are slow and complex.

Dr. Chandan Kafa, said, “A promising technology to improve computational efficiency is hardware accelerators. In hardware acceleration, specific tasks can be offloaded to dedicated hardware instead of being performed by the CPU core of the system. For example, visualization processes may be offloaded onto a graphics card, thereby freeing the CPU to perform other tasks.”

He further added that they have developed two tools to validate the HLS process. One is FastSim, an RTL simulator that is 300 times faster than existing commercial simulators. and the other is DEEQ, which is an automated C to RTL equivalence checking tool for HLS verification.

Datarobot layoffs 7% of the Workforce to cutback Costs

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Dipayan Mitra

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May 12, 2022

AI technology and ROI enablement services providing startup Datarobot layoffs nearly 7% of its entire workforce as a step to cut back company costs.

The releases come months after Datarobot employees accused the company’s officials of favoring male employees for promotions, making sexist comments during meetings, threatening to fire the women if they complained to colleagues, etc.

According to reports, the decision was made by the CEO of Datarobot, Dan Wright. The company addressed the employees in an email, mentioning that the layoffs were a result of the startup’s extensive hiring strategy and changing market conditions in the technology industry.

“That level of investment is no longer sustainable for our business, particularly in the context of broader changes in the market, with investors now taking a harder look at efficiency and spending,” mentioned the email.

Surprisingly, the top company officials were spotted partying at luxurious destinations hours after the Datarobot decided to fire its employees.

Kevin McLaughlin, a reporter at The Information, said in a Tweet, “DataRobot has spent several million dollars on these events and on its marketing partnership with McLaren Racing. In the all-hands today, Wright explained the contracts for these initiatives were signed last year with funding already committed.”

Some employees told me DataRobot has spent several million dollars on these events, and on its marketing partnership with McLaren Racing. In the all-hands today, Wright explained the contracts for these initiatives were signed last year with funding already committed. (4/4)
— Kevin McLaughlin (@KevKubernetes) May 11, 2022

Many employees came up on social media platforms to reveal this information regarding the layoffs. Back in 2020, Datarobot had cut down its workforce amid economic uncertainty caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Datarobot confirmed the layoffs but did not provide any information regarding the number of employees it fired.

Symphony chooses Harbhajan Singh and Shikhar Dhawan for AI-led campaign

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Dipayan Mitra

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May 12, 2022

Symphony Harbhajan Singh Shikhar Dhawan AI campaign

India’s one of the largest air cooling brands, Symphony chooses Indian crickets Harbhajan Singh and Shikhar Dhawan for its new artificial intelligence (AI)-led advertisement campaign.

Symphony has collaborated with Rephrase AI to create personalized video ads for over 2,300 retailers in India. The AI-powered videos will feature the cricketing duo appreciating the work of individual retailers, making it the first-ever Indian ad campaign to use artificial intelligence and geo-targeting in the consumer durables industry.

According to officials, Rephrase AI created a digital avatar that cloned the cricketer’s face and voice and used AI to generate a unique video. The innovative ad campaign has an emotional nuance for the retailers that can turn out to be quite effective in the Indian consumer market.

Apart from providing personalized videos, Symphony also offered letters of recognition, certificates, and merchandise to its retailers as a token of gratitude for their contribution to its business.

Global Chief Marketing Officer of Symphony Limited, Anuj Arora, said, “We are ecstatic to have partnered with reputed cricketers Harbhajan Singh and Shikhar Dhawan. They came on board to create AI-driven customized videos for our dealership partners who are an integral part of our company.”

He further added that the goal is to instill brand loyalty and strengthen relationships with their business partners, and they are constantly brainstorming and innovating to come up with new intriguing campaigns.

“I am honored to be a part of this initiative spearheaded by Symphony Ltd. There are multiple layers of processes and teams to make a brand successful and achieve the goal of sales,” said Harbhajan Singh in his collaboration with Symphony.

He also mentioned that homegrown brands in India are doing an excellent job of ensuring a quick turnaround, and he wishes Symphony continued success!

Last year, Cadbury, a multinational confectionery company, also launched a similar artificial intelligence-powered tool in India that lets users create free personalized advertisements for their local stores with Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan. The advertisement was part of the company’s ‘NotJustACadburyAd’ campaign to promote local businesses.