Google, which makes almost all of its money on ads and internet user data, is undertaking herculean efforts to get a grip on artificial intelligence (AI). It's trying to develop software that allows machines to think and learn like humans. This includes the $525 million acquisition in 2014 of DeepMind, which is said to have lost an additional $162 million in 2016. Google is trying to load smartphones with AI and come up with AI smart speakers and other gadgets, and ultimately AI systems that control self-driving cars. Facebook, which also makes most of its money on ads and user data, is on a similar trajectory, but spreading into other directions, including a "creepy" run-in with two of its bots that were supposed to negotiate with each other but ended up drifting off human language and invented their own language that humans couldn't understand.

AI founder and CSO Suzanne Gildert, the question is much bigger: once AI itself becomes more developed, will we need to establish robot rights? Read more: #SUCanSummit: Kindred's Suzanne Gildert wants to merge with AI

Danish Nilfisk Holding A/S began being listed on the NASDAQ Stock Exchange under symbol NLFSK after being spun off from NKT A/S, a Danish conglomerate. Nilfisk is one of the world's leading suppliers of professional cleaning equipment with a strong brand and a vision for growth in robotics. Nilfisk expects that 10% of their revenue will come from autonomous machines within the next 5-7 years. In that pursuit, Blue Ocean Robotics and Nilfisk recently announced a strategic partnership to develop a portfolio of intelligent cleaning machines and robots to add to the Nilfisk line of industrial cleaners. "We estimate that approximately 70 percent of the cost of professional cleaning goes to labor. At the same time, the cleaning industry is one of the industries with the highest employee turnover. We therefore experience a significant need among our customers to introduce autonomous machines that can solve standardized cleaning tasks so that cleaning operators can be used for other assignments. We have a clear strategy to develop our product portfolio in partnership with highly-specialized technology companies that are the best in their field. We already have good experiences with this, and we are looking forward to starting this partnership with Blue Ocean Robotics, which complements our other partnerships very well."

The acquisition will enhance trivago's product with personalization technology which uses both Big Data and a customer-centric approach. Founded in 2015, tripl has developed an algorithm to give tailored travel recommendations by identifying trends in users' social media activities and comparing it with in-app data of like-minded users. The AI-driven product imitates the way a travel agent would recommend hotel experiences relevant to the customer, and combines it with the ease of online services. Following the acquisition, the former CTO and creator of the tripl algorithm, Hendrik Kleinwächter, will join trivago's development team to continue breaking new ground in personalization. Founded in 2005 and headquartered in Düsseldorf, Germany, trivago is a global hotel search platform, focused on reshaping the way travelers search for and compare hotels.

New Delhi: Parallel Dots, a three-year old start-up developing artificial intelligence-based solutions for different industry verticals, has raised $1.4 million from US-based Multipoint Capital, the company said on Tuesday. Multipoint Capital had earlier invested $600,000 in the company last year. Parallel Dots was launched in January 2014 and was incubated at TLabs, the start-up incubator managed by Times Internet. Parallel Dots, which has offices in Gurugram and Delaware, US, is an applied AI research firm that licenses its technology to enterprise clients. In an interview, co-founder Angam Parashar said the solutions are used by companies in financial technology, insurance, healthcare, and market research.

TechCrunch has learned that Amazon has acquired Body Labs, a company with a stated aim of creating true-to-life 3D body models to support various b2b software applications -- such as virtually trying on clothes or photorealistic avatars for gaming. One source suggested the price-tag Amazon paid for Body Labs could be $100M . However a second well-placed source suggested it's closer to $70M than $100M -- so we're pegging it at between $50M and $70M. An Amazon spokeswoman declined to comment on the acquisition. New York based Body Labs was founded in March 2013, according to CrunchBase, and had raised more than $10M across two investment rounds -- closing an $8M Series A in November 2015.

Wall Street analysts say the iPhone X will push a large number of consumers to upgrade their devices, but KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo says the "super cycle" will happen until 2018, according to an investor's note obtained by MacRumors. Apple will release the iPhone X in November, but Kuo says "the real super cycle" won't occur until next year. A supercycle is described as a high demand in upgrading to a new phone. Wall Street analysts believe many people who bought the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus three years ago will want to get a brand new device this year. Apple has been reportedly struggling with the iPhone X's main feature, the Face ID.

The startup product is an AI based chatbot with remote identification. Instead of mobile applications and internet banking, all money management, including activation, blocking and unblocking of cards, and free of charge transfers in TalkBank are handled by chatbots, intellectual robot assistants, using text messages. The startup uses machine learning technologies which recognize users' speech and forecasts responses. That's why we – the TalkBank team- created the robot bank. Investors' support will certainly allow us to offer services to wider population in Russia and abroad.

HubSpot announced this morning that it has acquired chatbot startup Motion AI. Motion AI launched in 2015 and offers an editor for building chatbots that work on websites, Facebook Messenger, SMS and Slack, no coding required. Even before the acquisition, the tool was already integrated into HubSpot Free CRM. The entire Motion AI team, including founder and CEO David Nelson, will be joining HubSpot. The companies also said they'll be sharing more details about the integration plans at HubSpot's Inbound event next week.

The transformation of BlackBerry from a bombed-out, loss-making smartphone maker to a new-look software firm appears to be working: the Canadian business has reported better-than-expected quarterly profits, boosting its shares by more than 12%. The company, which was famous for its tiny keyboard phones and in 2010 had more than a third of the US smartphone market, was almost driven to extinction by the iPhone. By 2016 it had less than 1% of the US market. Thousands of workers were laid off as losses mounted and the business eventually gave up making phone handsets and decided to reinvent itself as a software and services specialist selling to large corporations. In its profits update on Thursday the company said sales at its high-margin software unit had hit a record and the outlook for the rest of the year was robust, boosting investor confidence in its turnaround strategy.