TORONTO, Jan. 9, 2018 /PRNewswire/ – TD Bank Group (TD) (TSX and NYSE: TD) today 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."

TORONTO, Jan. 9, 2018 /CNW/ – TD Bank Group (TD) (TSX and NYSE: TD) today announced the acquisition of Layer 6 Inc. ("Layer 6"), a world-renowned artificial intelligence (AI) company based in Toronto, Ontario.

Camera maker GoPro Inc. is getting out of the drone business, laying off more than 20% of its workforce and losing two executives after predicting a sharp decline in its fourth-quarter revenue and disclosing weak holiday-season demand for its cameras. The disappointing outlook sent shares plummeting nearly 30% to an all-time low of $5.32 in morning trading Monday. The company went public at $24 a share in June 2014. The company announced cost-cutting measures that it said would help it save $80 million. Among them are slashing its global workforce from 1,254 employees to fewer than 1,000; reducing GoPro Chief Executive Nicholas Woodman's cash compensation to $1 (it was $800,000 in 2016); and ending production of its aerial drone, named Karma.

Artificial intelligence (AI) and data science company, CLARA Analytics, has announced a $11.5 million Series A funding round led by OAK HC/FT, a venture growth-equity fund investing in Healthcare Information & Services and Financial Services Technology. CLARA builds AI-based solutions that are focused on claims operations for both the property & casualty and disability insurance sectors, and aims to support the improvement of the international commercial property and casualty market by reducing the billions of dollars in claims leakage that occurs every year. Founder and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of CLARA, Jayant Lakshmikanthan, commented; "CLARA brings together a combination of the latest in AI technology, extensive insurance industry expertise, and a design thinking approach to rapidly drive meaningful value for our customers. We are excited to welcome Oak HC/FT to the team and look forward to leveraging their extensive insurance and insurtech expertise." "CLARA is a first mover in utilizing AI to dramatically improve claims outcomes for the P&C industry. Their technology is highly advanced and has already driven strong ROI for its customers by reducing up to 10 percent of claims indemnity and loss adjustment expenses. We look forward to partnering with CLARA in building their business and to continue to develop and mature solutions for other property and casualty lines of business," said Andrew Robinson, executive in residence at OAK HC/FT.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is taking the world by storm, impacting startups and tech majors in a big way. Incidents like when the greatest Go player Lee Sedol lost to AI program AlphaGo, developed by Alphabet Inc. GOOGL, speaks volumes about the same. The rapid development of AI technology is reflected in the stellar performance of the Robotics & Artificial Intelligence ETF BOTZ and the ROBO Global Robotics and Automation Index ETF ROBO . While BOTZ has rallied 59.6% over the past year, ROBO gained 44.8%. Both ETFs outperformed the S&P 500's 19.4% gain.

Artificial intelligence (AI) and data science company, CLARA Analytics, announced on Thursday it raised $11.5 million Series A funding round led by OAK HC/FT for its AI insurtech claim solutions. Founded in 2016, CLARA Analytics states it builds easy-to-use, AI/machine-learning based products. "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: "CLARA is a first mover in utilizing AI to dramatically improve claims outcomes for the P&C industry. Their technology is highly advanced and has already driven strong ROI for its customers by reducing up to 10 percent of claims indemnity and loss adjustment expenses. We look forward to partnering with CLARA in building their business and to continue to develop and mature solutions for other property and casualty lines of business."

GoPro is laying off about 200 to 300 employees, largely from its Karma drone division, TechCrunch has reported. The company has informed the employees, who will remain on payroll for another six weeks, and will make a public announcement sometime soon. GoPro had already laid off around 270 people earlier this year, in part because of increasing competition in the action camera industry, and in part because of the disastrous launch of its Karma drone. GoPro was originally developing a drone with DJI, but elected to go it alone to develop the Karma. Shortly after it was released, however, buyers reported that it was dropping out of the sky, reportedly because its batteries were disconnecting. It also faced competition from DJI's Mavic Pro drone, which had features that the Karma lacked on release like a "follow me" mode.

Pienso, a machine learning platform for non-programmers, has closed a $2.1 million seed round. Led by Eniac Ventures, with participation from SoftTech VC, Indicator Ventures and E14 Fund, Pienso is focused on democratizing machine learning for domain experts who are non-programmers with no technical or data scientist experience. The funding allows the company to scale operations. "Investment by large enterprises in machine learning is rapidly accelerating as corporations spin up massive data lakes to garner insights into their business. However, it is costly, challenging to integrate and before now required data scientists on staff," said Vic Singh, Indian American general partner at Eniac.

Growbots uses machine learning to provide sales teams with the right leads to kickstart their outbound sales process. The service, which argues that its product can save each member of a sales team a few days of work every month, today announced that it has raised a $2.5 million funding round from Buran VC, Lighter Capital and a number of angel investors. This brings the company's total funding to $4.2 million. Growbots' service look at a company's own CRM data to learn about its customers, extract data about them and adjusts its target lists accordingly. "Growbots' AI algorithms will generate tailored contact lists for your team in minutes, run all of your outreach campaigns, optimize team/individual results, and manage their inboxes, so each person can focus entirely on talking to potential customers," the company's CEO and co-founder Greg Pietruszynski told us.

For a look at how human assisted AI can unlock data to drive new revenue growth and business performance at organizations Pedram Abrari, CTO of Pramata, weighs in with his thoughts, and also to debunk some common AI Big Data myths, the consequences of applying AI without accurate data, and/or how human-assisted AI is helping companies such as CenturyLink, Comcast Business, HPE, NCR, and Novelis achieve amazing ROI. Who is helping who? Human and AI interaction Was Toys R Us Too Slow to the Digital Transformation Party? Human assisted AI analytics updates by Pramata in Summer '17 version Sometimes "Small Data" Is Enough to Create Smart Products How'Winning Friends & Influencing People' Helps Turn Customers Into Strong References More tech companies choose Kansas City's Crossroads and land funding