Startups applying machine learning algorithms to advertising, sales, and marketing were highlighted this quarter by Oracle's acquisition of Tel Aviv-based cross-device advertising startup Crosswise for 50M. In fact, since January 2015, there have been 10 acquisitions in the space: Twitter acquired TellApart for more than 530M, Google acquired marketing-management startup Granata Decision Systems, and Israeli unicorn IronSource merged with in-app advertising startup Supersonic, to name a few. Just this year, private companies like Drawbridge, Persado, Lead Wizards, Kunlun AI, Mariana and Captiv8 raised equity funding rounds from investors including Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Sequoia Capital, and Goldman Sachs for AI-powered marketing and advertising solutions. In this light, we identified 13 startups to watch in this space with the help of the CB Insights' Mosaic score, which uses public data and predictive algorithms to assess the health of private companies. Here's a detailed list 13 advertising, sales & marketing companies to watch in 2016, listed in alphabetical order (all of the companies below have raised an equity funding round after January 2015):

Honda Motor Co. said Thursday that subsidiary Honda R&D Co. plans to establish a research and development base specializing in artificial intelligence in the Akasaka district of Tokyo in September. The major automaker will consolidate almost all of its AI-related R&D activities in the nation into the new base, called Honda R&D Innovation Lab Tokyo.

The EM algorithm is a novel numerical method to obtain maximum likelihood estimates and is often used for practical calculations. However, many of maximum likelihood estimation problems are nonconvex, and it is known that the EM algorithm fails to give the optimal estimate by being trapped by local optima. In order to deal with this difficulty, we propose a deterministic quantum annealing EM algorithm by introducing the mathematical mechanism of quantum fluctuations into the conventional EM algorithm because quantum fluctuations induce the tunnel effect and are expected to relax the difficulty of nonconvex optimization problems in the maximum likelihood estimation problems. We show a theorem that guarantees its convergence and give numerical experiments to verify its efficiency.

A business incubator from Beijing will open an accelerator in Mountain View on Thursday for artificial intelligence startups. TechCode will select startups with existing AI prototypes to spend six months in the program, including two weeks in China meeting potential investing, manufacturing and distribution partners. The program will conclude with a demo day, said Luke Tang, general manager of TechCode's U.S. Accelerator. TechCode's international presence in China, South Korea and Germany will give the startups an opportunity to tap into global markets, he said. TechCode will target startups that want to expand globally.

Google engineers unveil their latest feat: their program, AlphaGo, which defeated South Korean Go champion Lee Sedol. Note that this is the first of five Go games to occur before a winner is crowned. The talking point is how remarkable it is to configure a program to play this game, let alone defeat a professional. This Chinese board game, as old as age itself, is known for its layers of complexity. Lee could have won, had he changed one or two early decisions in the game.

At any given moment, pharmaceutical firms have a massive library of compounds and no clue what to do with them. Tucked away in extensive collections of synthetic and theoretical drug banks lie hidden gems - drugs to treat perhaps even the most devastating diseases - but identifying them is a pain: testing can take years, even decades, and often researchers aren't even sure what they're looking for. Dan provides interesting guest commentary with Geekwire: In short, the biggest threat posed by AI is not the advent of autonomous machines, but of human beings losing their autonomy by being driven from the production process. We must confront the potential for serious social unrest, perhaps even revolt or revolution. More than a location tracker for dogs, Tracy alerts owners when it is time to run, play and go to the bathroom and is smart enough to learn on its own Stockholm, Sweden (PRWEB) May 24, 2016 Tracy is a dog tracker that can do more than simply locate a dog's position.

Fears about the power of maniacal machines have been growing in recent years. Google is working on a'kill switch' to stop intelligent robots turning on their human masters. Fears about the power of maniacal machines have been growing in recent years, with both tech pioneer Elon Musk and Professor Stephen Hawking warning of the dreadful possibility of a Terminator-style war between humanity and our super-smart silicon creations . Now the search engine giant has published a paper outlining the work its British artificial intelligence (AI) team Deep Mind team is doing to ensure humanity is not swept away by a metallic fist. Deep Mind develops algorithms to allow robots to learn for themselves directly from raw experience or data.

Hours before the Federal Reserve Bank of New York approved four fraudulent requests to send 81 million from a Bangladesh Bank account to cyber thieves, the Fed branch blocked those same requests because they lacked information required to transfer money, according to two people with direct knowledge of the matter.

Last week the smart watch company Pebble announced a Kickstarter campaign for a new device that has no watch face and lives on your key ring. While optimized for exercise (it streams Spotify and quantifies your run) the Pebble Core also can be retooled easily to perform a variety of different functions, limited only by the apps that developers might imagine. Buried in the company's Kickstarter pitch was one of those ideas: "Add a Bluetooth or wired headset to create an always-on walkie-talkie or personal voice assistant." The italics are mine, but today Pebble itself is boldfacing those last few words, by announcing that the Core will integrate the capabilities of Amazon's Alexa super-bot. Pebble has been upfront about its broad vision for the Core, and while its pocket gadget has no microphone, a simple mobile-phone earbud or Bluetooth headset enables two way voice interaction.

Robot-authored news stories rated'more credible' by humans Facebook's iOS apps describe photos to blind users China wants to beat Google's AlphaGo with own AI program The development of artificial intelligence is progressing so fast that humans will soon need a technological interface inserted into their brains to be able to keep up with the ever smarter machines, Elon Musk said at a tech conference in California this week. The CEO of SpaceX and Tesla Motors was among a line-up of high-profile tech experts and entrepreneurs discussing the evolution of AI and machine learning at the Code Conference organised by tech publication Recode. He said that judging by the tempo of development, it is likely that AI systems will soon become so sophisticated that they will be able to create even more intelligent computers by themselves that could side-line the human race. Although Musk's comments may seem a bit far-fetched, other speakers at the conference, including Google CEO Sundar Pitchai and Amazon's chief Jeff Bezos, agreed that the technology could start affecting the world within the next five to 20 years. "I would say in five years, there's no doubt in my mind that cognitive AI will impact every decision made from healthcare to education to financial services," said Ginni Rometty, the CEO of IBM, which has been developing its own AI supercomputer, called Watson, since 2005. Amazon's CEO, Jeff Bezos, predicts that AI will dominate the technology sector in approximately 20 years.