Ford has agreed to acquire Chariot, an on-demand shuttle service based in San Francisco. This morning, the automaker said it would expand Chariot's shuttle service beyond San Francisco to at least five more markets in the next 18 months. At the moment, Chariot operates 100 Ford Transit shuttles along 28 routes in the Bay Area. It chooses routes by collecting votes from potential riders, but Ford also said it will move to a more complex algorithm in the future. The goal of a service like this is to fill the gap between taxi and bus services, which are often woefully inadequate for point-to-point transportation in some cities.

INTC -0.30 % Intel Corp. INTC -0.30 % is nearing the sale of a majority stake in its McAfee unit to private-equity firm TPG, a deal that would value the computer-security business at about 4.2 billion including debt, people familiar with the matter said. TPG will take a 51% stake in the business, while Intel will retain 49%, according to one of the people. The transaction is expected to be announced as soon as Wednesday, the people said. Intel bought McAfee in 2011 in a 7.7 billion deal as the chip giant sought to diversify. The continuing decline in personal computers has forced Intel to focus on growth areas such as computers for data centers and noncomputer devices outfitted with data-processing and communications capabilities, known as the Internet of Things.

Earlier in the series, we discussed Salesforce's (CRM) operating segments' performance in its recently announced fiscal 2Q17 results. In its earnings release, Salesforce announced the introduction of "Salesforce Einstein," an AI (Artificial Intelligence) platform, at its upcoming annual 2016 Dreamforce conference. According to Salesforce, Einstein is "the world's first comprehensive artificial intelligence platform for CRM." The Salesforce Einstein platform has its foundation in different acquisitions the company has made in the past like RelateIQ, MetaMind, Implisit Insights, PredictionIO, and Tempo, as the above chart shows. Salesforce stated, "We've been able to stitch all this together and focus on AI. AI is the next wave of our industry and has resulted in a machine learning team of more than 175 data scientists who have built this amazing Einstein platform."

NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA) was a PC graphics chip company who has matured into a specialized platform company who targets primarily four markets (Gaming, Professional Visualization, Data Center and Automotive), continuing to provide cutting edge visual computing solutions. The company consists of two reporting operating segments, GPU and Tegra Processor. While GPU remains the core strength of NVDA, the company's significant and consistent investment in research and development has been the key driver of sales that have grown from just over 4B in FY14 to an estimated 7B in FY17. NVDA remains the market leader in gaming with key growth contributions coming from professional visualization, deep learning and automotive. In gaming, only one third of the active GeForce users have upgraded to Maxwell with Pascal starting to ship in FQ2, meaning there is substantial scope for future uptake during an upgrade cycle.

Above the Trend Line: machine learning industry rumor central, is a recurring feature of insideBIGDATA. In this column, we present a variety of short time-critical news items such as people movements, funding news, financial results, industry alignments, rumors and general scuttlebutt floating around the big data, data science and machine learning industries including behind-the-scenes anecdotes and curious buzz. Our intent is to provide our readers a one-stop source of late-breaking news to help keep you abreast of this fast-paced ecosystem. We're working hard on your behalf with our extensive vendor network to give you all the latest happenings. Be sure to Tweet Above the Trend Line articles using the hashtag: #abovethetrendline.

Tech giant Microsoft has acquired artificial intelligence (AI)-based scheduling service Genee that simplifies the scheduling and rescheduling of large group meetings for companies. Microsoft will integrate the AI technology into Office 365 before shutting down Genee. Co-founders Ben Cheung and Charles Lee, who plan to join Microsoft, started Genee in 2014 to simplify the time-consuming task of scheduling (and rescheduling) meetings. "It is especially useful for large groups and for when you don't have access to someone's calendar," Jha added. Genee uses natural language processing and optimised decision-making algorithms so that interacting with a virtual assistant is just like interacting with a human one.

Salesforce.com Inc. CEO has revealed the company is building a new artificial intelligence (AI) product called "Einstein," in a lengthy interview with Forbes. The article says that Salesforce's Einstein project is the reason why the company decided to shell out a massive 390 million to acquire responsive-email firm Relate IQ and its CEO Steve Loughlin almost two years ago. In addition, the project also explains why Salesforce has acquired no less than six AI-related startups in the last couple of years. "If this is not the next big thing, I don't know what is," Benioff told Forbes' writer Alex Konrad. The article portrays Benioff as a highly successful and hyper-energetic CEO who's built one of the fastest growing and most innovative tech firms around, seeking new innovation to drive the next stage of the company's growth.

Microsoft Corp. on Monday said it has agreed to buy Genee, a "smart" scheduling app, as the company continues its effort to embed AI in all of its digital experiences. Rajesh Jha, vice president of Microsoft's Outlook and Office 365 business, said in a blog post that the acquisition will help "further our ambition to bring intelligence into every digital experience" as it builds new Office 365 productivity capabilities and services. Powered by AI, Genee could be used to enhance Microsoft's own virtual assistant, Cortana, which competes with Alphabet's Google Now and Apple Inc.'s Siri. By reading users' emails, Cortana can track packages and set reminders based on location, and other tasks. With Genee, it would be able to automatically set up business meetings by recognizing key phrases in emails. Both Google Now and Siri can interact with calendars to coordinate meetings on command, said Mike Gualtieri, a principal analyst at Forrester Research.

Tech giant Microsoft has acquired artificial intelligence (AI)-based scheduling service Genee that simplifies the scheduling and rescheduling of large group meetings for companies. Microsoft will integrate the AI technology into Office 365 before shutting down Genee. Co-founders Ben Cheung and Charles Lee, who plan to join Microsoft, started Genee in 2014 to simplify the time-consuming task of scheduling (and rescheduling) meetings. "It's especially useful for large groups and for when you don't have access to someone's calendar," Jha added. Genee uses natural language processing and optimised decision-making algorithms so that interacting with a virtual assistant is just like interacting with a human one.

Feels like a home away from home. Microsoft acquires AI-powered scheduling service Genee, to be shut down and merged with Office ... 'Software is eating the world': How robots, drones and artificial intelligence will change everything