US auto retailer AutoNation Inc announced a multi-year partnership on Thursday to support Alphabet Inc's Waymo self-driving car unit, including vehicle maintenance and repairs as the company adds new brands into its fleet, sending its shares up 13 percent to a high for the year. That news was accompanied by a better-than expected third-quarter profit as AutoNation performed well despite the impact of hurricanes during the quarter. There is fierce competition between large automakers to bring self-driving cars to market first. Lauderdale, Florida-based AutoNation is the latest in a series of recent partnerships the self-driving unit has formed. Google has revealed the self driving minivans it hopes could revolutionize the way we travel.

Mapbox, a Washington, DC and San Francisco provider of nav systems for car companies and others involved in autonomous vehicles, raised $164 million in a Series C round led by the SoftBank Vision Fund, with participation from existing investors including Foundry Group, DFJ Growth, DBL Partners, and Thrive Capital. "Location data is central and mission critical to the development of the world's most exciting technologies," said Rajeev Misra, who helps oversee SoftBank's Vision Fund. Element AI, a Canadian startup providing learning platform solutions for self-driving and advanced manufacturing, raised $135 CAD million (around $105 million) in a Series A round (in June) led by Data Collective, a SV-based venture capital firm, and included participation by Fidelity Investments Canada, National Bank of Canada, Intel Capital, and Real Ventures. Ninebot, the Chinese consumer products company that bought out Segway and raised $80 million in 2015, raised another $100 million in a Series C round from the SDIC Fund Management Co. and the China Mobile Fund. Horizon Robotics, another Chinese startup, raised $100 million in a Series A round led by Intel Capital with participation by Wu Capital, Morningside Venture Capital, Linear Venture, Hillhouse Capital and Harvest Investments.

Research analysts are the most likely employees on Wall Street to find themselves working with--or being replaced by--robots, according to a survey by Greenwich Associates. By next year, some 75% of banks and financial firms will either explore or implement artificial intelligence technologies, harnessing a variety of digital services to extract insights from mountains of data. While AI is probably near the peak of its hype cycle, several factors have helped it gain traction in recent years, according to Greenwich. Billions of images and documents are now available online for training computers to spot patterns and other high-level tasks. Advances in graphical processing units, which are adept at the kind of data crunching required by AI, are making sifting through daunting datasets much easier.

ASX-listed artificial intelligence startup Brainchip Holdings has completed a capital raise of $21.5 million, with plans to invest the money into further developing machine learning video analytics technology. Brainchip, a developer of AI and machine learning software and hardware solutions, has reportedly developed its own spiking neural network, which the company describes as a "neuromorphic computing which simulates the functionality of the human brain". The technology powers Brainchip's flagship product, Brainchip Studio, a tool designed to analyse video footage and recognise patterns or faces. The software is intended for use in law enforcement and intelligence organisations. Brainchip claims the software includes advanced facial detection, extraction and classification algorithms and can run on low resolution feeds, requiring only a 24x24 pixel image to detect a face.

South Korean tech giant Samsung Electronics logged a record profit of 11.2trn won – $10bn (£7.6bn) – in the July to September period, it said on Tuesday, its best for any quarter. The world's biggest memory chip and smartphone maker had its de facto leader jailed in August for bribery and faced a recall of its flagship Galaxy Note 7 device. But its net profits soared 148% on the same period a year ago, it said in a statement, thanks to strong demand for its memory chips and a recovery in smartphone sales with the roll-out of the new generation Galaxy Note 8. The figures come only two weeks after chief executive Kwon Oh-Hyun resigned, saying the South's biggest firm was facing an "unprecedented crisis" and its current profitability was "merely a fruit of decisions and investment made in the past". The firm described Tuesday's numbers as an "overall robust performance".

SAN, FRANCISCO/SEOUL – As of early fall, it was clearer than ever that production problems meant Apple Inc. wouldn't have enough iPhone Xs in time for the holidays. The challenge was how to make the sophisticated phone -- with advanced features such as facial recognition -- in large enough numbers. As Wall Street analysts and fan blogs watched for signs that the company would stumble, Apple came up with a solution: It quietly told suppliers they could reduce the accuracy of the face-recognition technology to make it easier to manufacture, according to people familiar with the situation. With the iPhone X set to debut on Nov. 3, we're about to find out whether the move has paid off. Some analysts say there may still be too few iPhone Xs to meet initial demand.

Investors and analysts have been expecting Ant to go public sometime in 2018. The Hangzhou-based company last raised $4.5 billion from private investors in April 2016 in a deal that gave it a $60 billion valuation--and its business has since expanded significantly. An IPO "is not a necessity or a priority" right now, said Douglas Feagin, Ant's president of international business, in an interview with The Wall Street Journal in Hong Kong. Mr. Feagin, an American who was a Goldman Sachs Group Inc. investment banker for more than two decades, said he can appreciate the benefits of going public but Ant has other, more pressing, plans to implement. Among Ant's pursuits: expanding Alipay's global footprint within and beyond the 70 countries the payments system is used in, while plumbing for new technology investments globally in things like facial-recognition and machine-learning systems.

Intel Corp. reported strong revenue growth during its third quarter as its "data-centric" strategy begins to take hold in key technology sectors like all-flash storage. Meanwhile, it is readying a new AI chip. Intel was among several leading U.S. technology companies reporting strong revenues this week along with Amazon and Google. The chipmaker reported revenue totaling $16.1 billion for its third quarter, about $400 million higher than forecast. Intel said it is revising its annual revenue forecast up by $700 million to $62 billion.

Chinese tech companies City Cloud and SoundAI have successfully raised $30 million and $15 million in separate funding rounds respectively. Cisco Investments and Country Garden Holdings co-led a $30 million (RMB200 million) Series B round in City Cloud International, a Hangzhou-based company focused on cloud computing and Big Data technologies, China Money Network reported. City Cloud disclosed the latest investment during the company's fifth anniversary, along with RMB500 million worth of credit from several banks. The company develops and sells Smart Connected Communities platforms and cloud computing services. It has subsidiaries in Beijing, Guangzhou, Shanghai, Chengdu, and Hong Kong.

For many founders the road to raising capital usually takes months, if not years, but for Flamingo founder Dr Catriona Wallace the latest part of her journey took just 12 minutes. The artificial intelligence fintech startup, which is listed on the Australian Securities Exchange through its holding company Cre8tek, raised $5.1 million last month via a share placement to new and existing institutional, professional and sophisticated investors. The oversubscribed round closed after just 12 minutes, with $10 million in bids vying for the 128.1 million in shares that were on offer for 4c each. "There's recently been a lot more interest and conversation [in Australia] around artificial intelligence, and this is reflected in the success of this raise," Wallace tells StartupSmart. "Like all startup founders I know that raising money is always a difficult task -- we were very pleased that the $5.1 million was oversubscribed and mainly our feeling was of happiness and confidence. It gives us a really significant runway into 2018 to prove our next key milestones."