BEIJING (Reuters) - Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) startup SenseTime Group said on Wednesday it has sealed an investment from chipmaker Qualcomm Inc as part of a funding round that will close later this year. SenseTime and Qualcomm had announced a strategic tie last month to collaborate on AI, which will see SenseTime's proprietary algorithms deployed in smart devices. Qualcomm, in a statement, confirmed the investment in SenseTime. The two firms did not disclose the size of the investment. Reuters reported earlier in November that SenseTime plans to raise about $500 million in a new funding round, in what would be the biggest ever such fundraising by an AI startup.

French video game giant Ubisoft has recorded strong revenue in the recent past, thanks to a stable of consistent hits like Rainbow Six: Siege, Ghost Recon: Wildlands and the Assassin's Creed franchise. Even the oddball crossover Mario Rabbids: Kingdom Battle for Nintendo Switch found success earlier this year. But Ubisoft's steady run of success has not saved the company from talk of a possible hostile takeover by fellow French media corporation Vivendi. The good news for Ubisoft: It does not seem like a takeover will happen in the immediate future. Vivendi said it will not attempt a takeover in the next six months.

Apple's iPhone X may have only been on sale for a few days, but Apple's plans for its successor are already being analysed. Experts say there are three new iPhones on the way - including Apple's biggest ever phone with a gigantic 6.5 inch screen. All three will abandon the home button in favor of Apple's FaceID system, analyst Ming-Chi Kuo of KGI Securities believes. Is this Apple's 2018 lineup? Experts say there are three new iPhones on the way - including Apple's biggest ever handset with a gigantic 6.5 inch screen.

The MPs behind this independent review certainly seem to think so. Culture Secretary Karen Bradley suggested AI has "the potential to improve our everyday lives", while Business Secretary Greg Clark praised the "huge social and economic benefits its use can bring". More than that: they want to make Britain the world leader in AI and add £630bn to the UK economy. With UK productivity having remained largely stagnant since the 2008 financial crisis, we need to start innovating in areas like AI to create bold new ways of working. But to make this work we need more than government reports.

The biggest acquisition in the history of technology has been tabled. Broadcom, which itself was purchased by Singapore's Avago Technologies in 2016, has made a $130 billion bid for rival chipmaker Qualcomm. If it goes through (and that's a big if), Broadcom would be paying 20 times the amount Candy Crush-maker King was purchased for, or more than 130 times the amount it cost Facebook to buy Instagram. It could even get the equivalent of five LinkedIns for the price. The proposed deal is so big it's nearly double the biggest tech buyout of all time, Dell's $67bn buyout of EMC in 2015. Broadcom's purchase of Qualcomm would make the company dominant in the chipmaking industry.

Nvidia reported a stellar quarter for the three months ended October 31. Nvidia had $2.6 billion in revenue in the quarter, and $1.5 billion of it came from graphics chips for gaming PCs. But the company's investment in artificial intelligence chips is paying off, with data center growing beyond $500 million in revenue for the first time. Jensen Huang, CEO of Santa Clara, California-based Nvidia, said his company started investing in AI seven years ago, and that its latest AI chips are the result of years of work by several thousand engineers. That has given the company an edge in AI, and other rivals are scrambling to keep up, he said.

Nvidia reported a stellar quarter for the three months ended October 31. Nvidia had $2.6 billion in revenue in the quarter, and $1.5 billion of it came from graphics chips for gaming PCs. But the company's investment in artificial intelligence chips is paying off, with data center growing beyond $500 million in revenue for the first time. Jensen Huang, CEO of Santa Clara, California-based Nvidia, said his company started investing in AI seven years ago, and that its latest AI chips are the result of years of work by several thousand engineers. That has given the company an edge in AI, and other rivals are scrambling to keep up, he said. I interviewed Huang on Thursday, after his company's earnings call, and we talked about everything from self-driving car predictions to cryptocurrency mining.

Facebook and Micron are among the favorite ways to play the boom in artificial intelligence, according to top technology analysts. The analysts were identified by looking at the average return of their recommendations and their success rate in those calls, as tracked by TipRanks, a Wall Street analyst database. Here are five favorite AI stocks recommended by the best-performing technology analysts. In 2017, Microsoft changed its strategy from a "mobile-first and cloud-first world" to "an intelligent cloud and an intelligent edge infused with AI." And this strategy shift seems to be paying off.

High-performance graphics chip pioneer NVidia reported better than expected fiscal Q3 earnings after the market close on Thursday. NVidia raised the dividend 7 percent to 15 cents a share and intends to return $1.25 billion to shareholders during the next fiscal year. NVidia consistently trumps analysts' expectations and comes just after Sony and gaming stocks Take Two Interactive $TTWO and Activision Blizzard $ATVI delivered strong earnings. NVIDA chips, graphics processors are gaming industry standouts for personal computers and video game consoles. Earnings: EPS $1.33 way ahead of analysts expected EPS of 94 cents on Revenue of $2.64 Billio beats expected 18% revenue growth to $2.36 billion.. "We had a great quarter across all of our growth drivers. Industries across the world are accelerating their adoption of AI." said CEO Jensen Huang in a statement What excites investors is earnings driven by strength across all product lines including, high-performance processors for data centers, artificial intelligence, digital currencies, machine learning and self-driving cars.

Today, Amazon and the Max Planck Society announced that they intend to enter into a strategic collaboration to promote research in the field of artificial intelligence (AI). Amazon plans to build an Amazon Research Center adjacent to the campus of the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Tuebingen. As part of the Cyber Valley initiative, the new center intends to bring together international key players from science and industry to concentrate their research activities in the field of AI. Amazon plans to invest 1.25 million Euro over the coming years to fund research groups in Tuebingen's Cyber Valley tech initiative. Cyber Valley was launched in December 2016 and focuses on AI research, such as robotics, machine learning and computer vision.