Akeneo, a French e-commerce company, said Thursday it has acquired Sigmento, an Israeli startup that uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to help online vendors better describe their products. "This was a technology-based acquisition," said Fred de Gombert, co-founder and CEO of Akeneo in a phone interview. The brand that will succeed in the future will be the one "that masters the product experience," he said, by describing the product successfully for every kind of search and on every platform including social media, virtual marketplaces, and voice assistants. Get The Start-Up Israel's Daily Start-Up by email and never miss our top stories Free Sign Up "Sigmento was able to demonstrate success in this area on a large scale," said de Gombert. "For us, this was a critical consideration. Sigmento's technology is one of the most sophisticated we have seen."

Rokid, a Chinese startup that makes an AI voice assistant and smart devices, just raised a Series B extension round led by Temasek Holdings, with participation from Credit Suisse, IDG Capital and CDIB Capital. The size of the round was not released, but a source familiar with the deal told TechCrunch that it is $100 million. The company's previous funding was its Series B round, which was announced in November 2016. Founder and chief executive officer Mingming Zhu says Rokid raised a Series B instead of a C round because the company, which is based in Hangzhou, China with research centers in Beijing and San Francisco that develop its proprietary natural language processing, image processing, face recognition and robotics technology, is still in its early stages. Rokid wants to focus on gathering more resources and bringing in strategic investors like Temasek Holdings before moving on to a Series C.

SaaS had a major impact on the way companies consume cloud services. This ebook looks at how the as a service trend is spreading and transforming IT jobs. IBM said its as-a-service annual run rate is $10.3 billion exiting the fourth quarter, which was better than expected on earnings and revenue. Big Blue reported a solid quarter relative to expectations and showed growth in its "strategic imperatives" revenue, which includes analytics, cloud and newer businesses. The company reported non-GAAP fourth quarter earnings of $5.18 a share on revenue of $22.5 billion, up 4 percent from a year ago.

Global IT spending growth began to turnaround in 2017 with annual increases expected through 2021. However, uncertainty looms as organizations consider potential impacts of Brexit, currency fluctuations, and a possible global recession. Despite uncertainty, businesses will continue to invest in IT as they anticipate revenue growth, but their spending patterns will shift. Projects in digital business, blockchain, IoT, and progress from algorithms to machine learning through artificial intelligence (AI) will continue unabated. In this webinar, Gartner will walk through four different headlines that will emerge in 2018 as massive changes to the status quo.

Santa Clara, California-based CLARA Analytics, a developer of AI-based solutions focused on claims operations for the property and casualty and disability insurance industries, has raised $11.5 million in Series A funding. Oak HC/FT led the round. CLARA enables the $800 billion global commercial property and casualty market to improve financial performance by decreasing the billions of dollars in claims leakage that occurs annually. Today, solutions from CLARA empower workers' compensation claims organizations to improve the medical management of claimants while simultaneously reducing the costs of claims with easy-to-use AI-based solutions, CLARA providers and CLARA claims. CLARA's advanced analytic solutions incorporate the latest in AI technology to reduce claims leakage and frictional costs for insurance companies and self-insured corporations by: Detecting (early) potential litigation and optimizing legal representation to improve outcomes and reduce defense expenses.

Does a robot manage your money? For many of us, the answer is yes. Online and algorithmic investment and financial advice is easy to come by these days, usually under the moniker of "robo-advisor." Startups such as Wealthfront, Personal Capital, and Betterment launched robo-advisors as industry disruptors, and incumbents, such as Schwab's (Intelligent Advisor), Vanguard (Personal Advisor Services), Morgan Stanley and BlackRock have joined the fray with their own hybrid machine/advisor solutions. It's clear that robo-advisors and AI play an important and growing role in the financial services industry, but a question remains. Will robo-advisors disrupt corporate capital allocation the same way they have personal capital allocation?

Lisbon-headquartered Unbabel, a startup that has developed what it describes as an "AI-powered, human-refined" translation platform that makes it more cost effective to conduct business globally, has raised $23 million in Series B funding. The round is led by Scale Venture Partners, with participation from Microsoft Ventures, Salesforce Ventures, Samsung Next, Notion Capital, Caixa Capital, and Funders Club. It follows a $5 million Series A round in October 2016. A graduate of Y Combinator's 2014 Winter Batch, Unbabel uses AI/machine learning, augmented with a network of around 55,000 human translators, to power translations across multiple text-based content and communication, such as email, chat, websites and more. This is delivered via an API and integrations with the likes of Salesforce, Zendesk, WordPress, Mailchimp, and other enterprise software.

Does a robot manage your money? For many of us, the answer is yes. Online and algorithmic investment and financial advice is easy to come by these days, usually under the moniker of "robo-advisor." Startups such as Wealthfront, Personal Capital, and Betterment launched robo-advisors as industry disruptors, and incumbents, such as Schwab's (Intelligent Advisor), Vanguard (Personal Advisor Services), Morgan Stanley and BlackRock have joined the fray with their own hybrid machine/advisor solutions. It's clear that robo-advisors and AI play an important and growing role in the financial services industry, but a question remains. Will robo-advisors disrupt corporate capital allocation the same way they have personal capital allocation?

Decades in the making, Canadian research in fields such as neural networking and machine learning is now coming into its own, as centres like the Montreal Institute for Learning Algorithms and Toronto's Vector Institute for Artificial Intelligence are propelling vibrant ecosystems and startup communities, while government is doing its part through immigration policies geared towards attracting new talent and programs like the Pan-Canadian Artificial Intelligence Strategy, which will devote $125 million in federal dollars to AI research over the next five years. We've seen significant investment from venture capital, too, with the current boom in VC funding for Canadian tech companies having a lot to do with movements in the AI space. And as more and more companies start to incorporate AI technologies, the field keeps growing. But where are the AI investment winners, you ask? Here are five stocks that analysts say have significant upsides.

TD Bank Group has announced the acquisition of Layer 6 Inc. ("Layer 6"), a world-renowned artificial intelligence (AI) company based in Toronto, Ontario. Layer 6 has emerged as a global thought-leader and pioneer in the delivery of responsive, personalized and insight-driven experiences for the financial services industry. Layer 6 founders Tomi Poutanen and Jordan Jacobs are also co-founders of the Vector Institute, a world leader in AI research and education that TD also supports. "Anticipating and meeting customer needs are at the heart of our promise, and we are excited to further accelerate our innovation agenda to deliver well into the future. As we deploy new solutions, we will extend our deep relationship with customers across all of our platforms and offer personalized, connected and legendary experiences for our customers in the digital age."