Zoominfo Acquired Chorus.ai To Deliver Conversational Intelligence Through Its New Platform

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July 15, 2021

Zoominfo Acquited Chorus.ai To Deliver Conversational Intelligence Through Its New Platform

Washington-based software company Zoominfo recently announced that it had acquired an industry-leading artificial intelligence company Chorus.ai to deliver conversational intelligence through its advanced go-to-market platform.

This new acquisition has increased Zoominfo’s market valuation to $70 billion. A $575 million deal was cracked between the two companies, which resulted in the acquisition of Chorus.ai.

Earlier, Zoominfo also acquired a data intelligence startup Clickagy to launch its new streaming platform.

Chorus.ai is a San Francisco-based startup founded in 2015 that specializes in conversational intelligence. Through its artificial intelligence-powered platform, the company helps its clients to effectively train their sales teams based on the analytical data provided by the platform after scrutinizing best performing sales meetings.

The founder and CEO of Zoominfo, Henry Schuck, said, “The acquisition of Chorus will accelerate our vision to deliver a modern go-to-market platform that brings together best-in-class intelligence with comprehensive data management, workflow, and engagement software, empowering companies to execute their revenue-generating strategies effectively.”

He further added that with the industry’s most extensive conversational intelligence portfolio, Chorus.ai would aid Zoominfo to expand by providing new insight categories and allowing higher target engagement.

The integration of the two platforms will enable its clients to make accurate decisions based on data analytics, which would help them increase their sales revenue. The CEO of Chorus.ai, Jim Benton, will be joining Zoominfo as the senior vice president of emerging products.

He said, “ZoomInfo has a bold vision of delivering a world-class go-to-market platform that empowers companies to drive better execution and more revenue.”

He also mentioned that Chorus.ai would play a significant role in delivering artificial intelligence-driven insights based on interaction with customers and prospects. This will help the merged company to tap into a new source of data generation.

Microsoft To Acquire Cybersecurity Company RiskIQ For $500 Million

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Dipayan Mitra

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July 14, 2021

Microsoft To Acquire Cybersecurity Company RiskIQ For $500 Million

Microsoft recently confirmed that it will acquire a cybersecurity company RiskIQ for $500 million. The company has been an industry leader in delivering internet security solutions with its products like Microsoft 365 Defender, Microsoft Azure Sentinel, and Microsoft Azure Defender.

By acquiring RiskIQ, the tech giant wants to strengthen its security systems further to provide its customers an enhanced digital safety against increasing cyber threats. RiskIQ is a San Francisco-based cybersecurity firm founded in 2009 by Elias Manousos, David Pon, and Chris Keirnan. It provides cloud-based digital security services to its clients across various platforms like Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Cloud, and many more.

The company developed a unique security auditing engine that automatically finds out any security loopholes and maps them out. RiskIQ’s researchers use machine learning to analyze global security threats collected from the internet using its crowdsourced Passive Total community.

RiskIQ has a vast customer base that includes enterprises like Facebook, American Express, BMW AG, and lots more. Utilizing RiskIQ’s experience, Microsoft aims to identify cyber threats at an early stage and neutralize them before they infect users’ systems.

CEO of RiskIQ, Elias Manousos, said, “The vision and mission of RiskIQ is to provide unmatched internet visibility and insights to better protect and inform our customers and partners’ security programs. We’re thrilled to add RiskIQ’s Attack Surface and Threat Intelligence solutions to the Microsoft Security portfolio, extending and accelerating our impact. Our combined capabilities will enable best-in-class protection, investigations, and response against today’s threats.”

According to sources, Microsoft is planning to integrate RiskIQ’s platform with its Azure cloud services to provide better cybersecurity to its customers. Earlier, Microsoft had acquired several other cybersecurity firms like CyberX and Refirm Labs to improve its Azure IoT platform.

Taoiseach And Minister Troy Launch Government Roadmap For Artificial Intelligence In Ireland

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Dipayan Mitra

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July 14, 2021

Taoiseach And Minister Troy Launch Government Roadmap For Artificial Intelligence In Ireland

Ireland recently announced the launch of its first National Artificial Intelligence Strategy under the supervision of Robert Troy.

The new strategy plans to drastically improve the country’s artificial intelligence services in the next five years by developing new methods for addressing local challenges and delivering better public services utilizing the power of artificial intelligence.

The strategy will also focus on the ethical use of artificial intelligence to help public services and businesses to grow. The government aims to create a supportive innovation ecosystem to let industries adopt artificial intelligence services. Experts suggest that this bold move of the government will considerably boost the country’s economy.

Robert Troy, Digital and Company Regulation, and State for Trade Promotion Minister of Ireland said, “Artificial Intelligence is all around us and already changing how we learn, work and live: from how we shop and bank online, to how we use the apps on our phones.”

He further added that this initiative would require support from the public in order to truly embrace the benefits of artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence is helping the country to address many crucial issues like climate action, public health, education, and many more. According to Troy, this is the correct time to put a coherent approach to artificial intelligence in a transparent manner to build public trust in artificial intelligence.

The Prime Minister of the Republic of Ireland, Micheál Martin, said, “This Artificial Intelligence Strategy presents a framework for achieving this across enterprises and the public sector, including through skills, infrastructure, and appropriate governance.”

The National Strategy mentions the appointment of a new Artificial Intelligence Ambassador along with many other vital decisions like the commencement of a new artificial intelligence program for businesses to provide advisory measures of artificial intelligence absorption, increasing the availability of open government data, and many more. The government also plans to build a secure data framework for the private sector.

Scale AI’s Market Valuation Reached $7 Billion After Its Latest Funding Round

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Dipayan Mitra

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July 14, 2021

Scale AI’s Market Valuation Reached $7 Billion After Its Latest Funding Round

Scale AI has witnessed a massive increase in valuation of about 110% since December making it a $7 billion company. This hike indicates that industries across the globe are demanding more and better smart software.

Scale AI is a San Francisco-based startup that specializes in data labeling. The process of annotating raw data before feeding it to an artificial intelligence algorithm is known as data labeling.

In the latest funding round of the company held in April, Scale AI had reached a market valuation of $7 billion. The funding was led by Tiger Global, Greenoaks Capital, and Dragoneer. It is the fifth largest deal made for artificial intelligence startups in the year 2021.

The company’s unique software package, Nucleus, enables its clients to quickly recognize and correct mislabeled data. It also improves data labels in order to provide better artificial intelligence algorithm training.

Alex Wang, the co-founder and CEO of Scale AI, said, “We help customers unlock this data that gets them off the starting blocks.” Former Amazon employee Jeff Wilke has recently joined Scale AI as Wang’s special advisor.

iRobot, an autonomous vacuum cleaner manufacturing company, recently revealed that it had used Scale AI’s artificial intelligence platform to annotate more than two billion images to fine tune its data. The software company’s platform has helped iRobots to add many new features to its products.

iRobot’s Chief Technology Officer, Chris Jones, said, “The better the data you have, the better performance you get at the other end.”

Alex Wang clarified that they are keeping a keen eye on that market, and they don’t intend to go public at this moment. Scale AI has many industry-leading clients like NVIDIA, AirBnB, and Lyft, who use their platform for data labeling.

Finance Teams Are Using Artificial Intelligence To Outperform Peers

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Dipayan Mitra

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July 14, 2021

Finance Teams Are Using Artificial Intelligence To Outperform Peers

A global survey of finance professionals conducted by Unit4 found out that most finance teams are now using artificial intelligence-powered systems to outperform peers as demand for skills increases.

More than 1760 working professionals from various countries like the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Canada, Australia, Belgium, Singapore, Netherlands, and Germany participated in the survey.

The survey undertaken by DJS Research indicated increased awareness of artificial intelligence among working professionals, especially for financial planning and analysis (FP&A). 47% of the companies that had adopted artificial intelligence said their productivity has increased, compared to 28% of non-adopters.

Chief Executive Officer of Unit4, Gordon Stuart, said, “Artificial intelligence should not just be seen as a way to automate processes. Finance professionals should also use it as an opportunity to move into a more strategic role, becoming storytellers and influencers, interpreting data through technology analysis, and translating the findings into meaningful insights relevant to their organizations.”

The finance sector does not entirely understand the importance of artificial intelligence and how it can help in making informed decisions. The companies which have adopted artificial intelligence services are performing better than their rivals, the study mentioned.

It was revealed that more than 33% of employees feel that artificial intelligence can be used to reduce operational time and improve data quality but are reluctant to believe that it can help them make quicker decisions.

86% of the finance leaders across the globe are now planning to undertake artificial intelligence training to improve the skills and productivity of their enterprises.

Chief Financial and Risk Officer of Nuclear Waste Management Organization Georgina Kossivas said, “Communications skills are also essential to articulate insights in terms that are relevant to senior decision-makers. Investments in artificial intelligence will only deliver on their true potential if finance professionals have developed these skills sufficiently.”

Broadcom Plans To Buy Software Company SAS

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Dipayan Mitra

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July 14, 2021

Broadcom Plans To Buy Software Company SAS

The US-based semiconductor manufacturer Broadcom recently announced its plan to buy an analytics software company SAS Institute. The deal is expected to have a valuation of $20 billion. According to sources, the deal might get closed in the coming week.

However, SAS’ official spokesperson Shannon Heath said that they do not comment on speculations and rumors. “SAS remains focused on furthering innovation to serve our customers best,” she added.

With this deal, Broadcom intends to diversify its product array from microchips to software. In the recent past, Broadcom had acquired several other IT companies, which has increased its market valuation to $200 billion.

A further hike in the company’s valuation can be seen after the acquisition of SAS Institute. SAS Institute is a US-based data management and analytics software developing company with a valuation of $3 billion, according to the company’s 2020 annual report.

Company officials claim that they have more than 8300 clients, including government agencies and Universities. SAS Institute was founded in 1976 by John Sall, James Goodnight, and Anthony James Barr.

Over the years, the company has grown and currently employs more than 1200 professionals and has made its presence in 143 countries. Forrester Vice President and Principal Analyst of SAS Institute, Mike Gualtieri, said, “At first, Broadcom seems like an odd and unlikely suitor for an advanced analytics artificial intelligence company. However, it would immediately make Broadcom a player in enterprise AI.”

Venerated economist Dr. Mike Walden said that the dilemma is whether Broadcom would move SAS Institute’s employees and operations. “If a sizable part of SAS ultimately leaves the area – while not a devastating blow – it would be a setback to the region. SAS is home-grown, and it had a big impact on making the Triangle a national tech center,” he mentioned.

OPPO Revealed Its Artificial Intelligence-Powered 6G Strategy

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Dipayan Mitra

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July 14, 2021

OPPO Revealed Its Artificial Intelligence-Powered 6G Strategy

The smartphone manufacturing giant OPPO recently revealed its artificial intelligence-powered 6G strategy. The company is confident that it would be able to launch 6G services by the next decade.

This shows the company’s farsightedness as they plan to launch 6G network services while most parts of the world are yet to adopt 5G. OPPO officials said that artificial intelligence would play a vital role in developing next-generation communication networks. With the help of artificial intelligence, 6G networks will be able to self-optimize and dynamically administrate themselves.

OPPO’s Chief 5G Scientist, Henry Tang, said, “Looking towards 2035, OPPO expects the number of intelligent agents in the world to far exceed the number of humans. Therefore, the next generation of communication technology, 6G, should be able to serve the needs not only of people but of all forms of intelligence and their various interactions.”

The OPPO Research Institute mentioned in its white paper release that 6G technology would revolutionize the network communication industry as it would change the way artificial intelligence interacts, learns and is applied.

According to Henry Tang, standardization of the next generation communication network will begin from 2025 and start being implemented from 2035. OPPO’s research team is currently working on system features and new technologies that would support 6G communication services.

Officials mentioned that not only smartphones but the autonomous driving vehicle industry would also enjoy the benefits of 6G services as the networks will be able to assign the required, artificial intelligence algorithm and would serve as the perfect communication connection between the self-driving vehicle and the physical environment as they would be able to download artificial intelligence algorithms trained by other vehicles and devices in a jiffy.

The OPPO research team said, “Unlike 4G and 5G networks, the artificial intelligence used for inferring and decision making in 6G networks will be organically integrated on the device side and the network side, with the device assuming a more important role.”

Scientists Use Artificial Intelligence To Detect Gravitational Waves

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Dipayan Mitra

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July 13, 2021

Scientists Use Artificial Intelligence To Detect Gravitational Waves

Eliu Huerta, a researcher at the US Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory, has developed a new artificial intelligence framework that allows scientists to detect gravitational waves.

The National Laboratory collaborated with NVIDIA, IBM, the University of Chicago, and the University of Illinois to develop this unique technology. Scientists can now detect accelerated, reproducible, and scalable gravitational waves using this framework. The artificial intelligence framework can run on low-end graphic processing units.

Argonne’s data science and learning division’s director, Ian Foster, said, “As a scientist, what’s exciting to me about this project is that it proves how, with the correct tools, artificial intelligence systems can be integrated naturally into the workflows of scientists, which would allow them to do their work faster and better.”

The artificial intelligence algorithm uses 64 NVIDIA GPUs to process vast amounts of high-quality data in less than seven minutes. Huerta said that in their research, they had combined artificial intelligence and supercomputing to carry out big-data experiments. They are further researching to find out whether artificial intelligence can be used to solve other relevant challenges.

Argonne National Laboratory’s research scientist, Ben Blaiszik, said, “This work highlights the significant value of data infrastructure to the scientific community. The long term investments that have been made by DOE, the National Institutes of Standards and Technology, National Science Foundation (NSF), and others have created a set of building blocks. We can bring these building blocks together in new ways to scale this analysis and to help deliver these capabilities to others in the future.”

The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) detected gravitational waves for the first time in 2015, which was of prime importance as it confirmed Albert Einstein’s theory on gravitation.

IBM Open Sources Framework For AI Workflows On Multicloud

By

Manisha Kalagara

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July 13, 2021

IBM announced the open-sourcing of a new serverless framework called CodeFlare on Wednesday. It will help integrate and simplify artificial intelligence workflows on multi-cloud and scaling of massive data.

The framework was built on an open-source distributed computing framework known as Ray while adding additional features for scaling and integration for developers and data workers. To simplify the training and optimization of machine learning models to perform tasks is an extremely human intrinsic process. To simplify this process and save some time, IBM released CodeFlare.

The simplification is carried out by creating pipelines to integrate, parallelize, and share data using a python-based interface. IBM had created pipelines earlier to deploy applications on IBM cloud called Continuous Delivery Tekton Pipelines, but they weren’t compatible with hybrid cloud platforms.

But, CodeFlare can unify these pipelines on IBM cloud and Red Hat OpenShift without learning a new workflow language for every infrastructure. IBM CodeFlare provides adapters for event triggers like the arrival of a new life for the pipelines to integrate and bridge with other cloud-native ecosystems. It also allows loading and portioning of data into data lakes, cloud storage, and distributed file systems.

With IBM CodeFlare, it’s easier for colleagues in the same team or organization to figure out what has been done in the past to run the pipelines. With robust tools and advanced APIs, the workload is more consistent, giving more room for actual research and development than understanding and deploying complexities.

The robust qualities of CodeFlare kicks in when its speed comes into play. According to the IBM blog, when CodeFlare was applied to optimize and analyze 100,000 machine learning training pipelines, it could execute each pipeline in 15 minutes instead of 4 hours. IBM is using the framework for its own artificial intelligence research and will be developing much more complex pipelines that are more consistent, reliable, and enhanced fault tolerance.

Tesla Rolls Out Its Self-Driving V9 Beta

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Dipayan Mitra

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July 13, 2021

Tesla RollS Out Its Self-Driving V9 Beta

Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk recently confirmed the much awaited launch of its fully self-driving V9 beta. Musk replied to various tweets stating that the beta version of V9 will start uploading on Friday at midnight.

It is a beta software update that is capable of controlling a car without the need for any human intervention. Elon Musk earlier said that software would launch in the month of June, but now he has confirmed that the self-driving car manufacturer has started rolling out the update from 10th July.

The software is expected to have a few flaws as it is still under the beta program, as Musk mentioned in his tweet, “bear in mind, it is still just a beta.”

The carmaker said that the new update will enable the Tesla cars to drive seamlessly in city traffic without any human expertise. Company officials suggest that this new update will considerably improve the current self-driving software used by Tesla.

The company has been doing extensive research for months to develop this enhanced software. It is expected that if the beta version lives up to the expectations, the company will then soon add the Full Self-driving (FSD) beta download button for the public.

As of now, nothing can be said regarding the claims of the company for the effectiveness of FSD beta version 9. The company has witnessed eleven deaths in several car crashes since it launched its first autonomous driving vehicle in 2015.