While Spotify may still be having a difficult time achieving profitability, the company has the money to continue buying essentially whatever it wants, as the financing and fundraising never seems to stop. In 2016 alone, the powerhouse collected $1 billion in debt financing and another half a billion in a convertible note, and that is to say nothing of the untold millions that weren't revealed in fundraising rounds and the actual revenue brought in by the company on its own.

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff isn't just predicting that artificial intelligence will one day help run everyone's companies, he's already using it at Salesforce today. He's got a special, not-yet-released version of Einstein, the company's artificial intelligence tech baked into its products, helping him run his company, he told Wall Street analysts on Thursday during the company's quarterly conference call. He invites this version of Einstein, called Einstein Guidance, to his Monday morning staff meeting, where up to 30 top executives update him on their progress for the quarter. Einstein Guidance is designed to do forecasting and modeling. It's especially useful to make sure that managers aren't trying to snow him.

A few weeks ago the new U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin took some public flak for suggesting, in response to an interviewer's question, that he was "not worried at all" that artificial intelligence would threaten the jobs of human workers, because in his view it is "50 or 100 years away." It's not clear why Mnuchin would say that, but with respect, I have to correct him. The original question to Mnuchin was rooted in popular worries that AI will eliminate jobs in the near future. However there's growing evidence that as companies embrace AI to stay competitive, which they will, in the end these changes will create more jobs than they destroy. Earlier this year, ServiceNow commissioned a survey of senior executives at 1,874 companies of varying sizes across numerous industries in seven global markets.

Music streaming service Spotify on Wednesday disclosed it has acquired the team and technology behind Niland, a French start-up with a service for delivering music recommendations. The move signals that Spotify wants to incorporate more artificial intelligence (AI) into its system as it fights off competition from alternatives like Apple Music. Niland is not well-known in the field of AI. But for years its CEO, Damien Tardieu, has done research on ways to extract meaningful information from raw music content in order to form connections with other music. This approach differs from collaborative filtering, one of the techniques that Spotify and others use.

Google I/O, the company's annual developer conference, is the company's biggest event of the year. One of the main talking points at this year's conference will likely be artificial intelligence. Google has been slowly injecting AI into many of its products and services and the company's CEO Sundar Pichai has sounded very bullish on the prospects of artificial intelligence in recent public appearances. As our chart illustrates, Google's recent M&A activity also speaks its ambitions in the AI field. According to numbers compiled by CB Insights, the company acquired 11 artificial intelligence startups since 2012, more than any other company.

At the I/O developer conference last year, Google debuted its first chip. The company kept the component mostly for internal artificial intelligence needs. Today, version two arrived -- and Google is selling this one. Chief Executive Officer Sundar Pichai announced the new chip on Wednesday during a keynote address at the Alphabet Inc. unit's annual I/O event. Normally, the gathering focuses on mobile software. This year's spotlight on hardware underscores Pichai's effort to transform the search giant into an "AI-first" company and a real cloud-computing contender.

Ford -- facing heavy costs for new technology and slowing U.S. car sales -- is cutting 1,400 non-factory jobs in North America and Asia Pacific this year in an effort to boost profits and rescue its sagging stock price. The company will offer voluntary early retirement and separation packages to around 10 percent of salaried workers in departments such as sales, marketing and human resources. It expects the actions to be complete by the end of September. The cuts are the biggest to Ford's U.S. white collar staff since 2007, when 7,200 workers took voluntary buyout packages. Ford believes it will meet its targets by voluntary means, spokesman Mike Moran said Wednesday.

Welcome to the Remark Holdings First Quarter Financial Results Conference Call. Today's conference is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Becky Herrick of LHA. Thank you all for joining us today for the Remark Holdings first quarter 2017 financial results conference call. On the call today are Chairman and CEO, Shing Tao; and CFO, Doug Osrow. After the prepared remarks, we'll open the call for questions. A webcast replay of today's call will be available at www.remarkholdings.com. Some of the statements made today may be forward-looking statements. These statements involve risks, uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements. Any forward-looking statements reflect Remark Holdings current views and Remark Holdings expressly disclaims any obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements after the date hereof. This disclaimer is only a summary of Remark Holdings' statutory forward-looking statements disclaimer which is included in its filings with the SEC.

US ride services company Lyft and Google parent Alphabet's self-driving car unit Waymo have launched a self-driving vehicle partnership, bringing together two rivals to dominant ride-sharing service Uber. Lyft, the No. 2 US ride service by ride volume, in a statement said a deal to launch self-driving pilots would accelerate its vision for transportation and Waymo, which is beginning tests of a self-driving car service in Phoenix, said the partnership would let its technology reach "more people, in more places". Neither offered many details of the agreement, which was reported earlier by The New York Times. The car industry and technology companies are racing to develop self-driving technology, which they expect in a number of years will transform transportation, cutting costs of ride services and changing the way people buy and use cars. Uber is the biggest US ride service by volume and has been developing self-driving technology, which it sees as a key to its future, as it expands its ride service with human drivers.

Grammarly has your back -- and also $110 million in funding, after its first venture round. Grammarly uses artificial intelligence to help fix spelling, grammar and syntax mistakes. You can use it as a Chrome extension, in Microsoft Office or as a Windows app. Silicon Valley venture capitalist General Catalyst led the funding round, reports Bloomberg, and was joined by IVP, Spark Capital, Breyer Capital and SignalFire. Grammarly has around 6.9 million users and a $12-per-month premium option that corrects "complex writing issues."