Today eBay announced it will acquire SalesPredict, an Israel-based company that leverages advanced analytics to predict customer buying behavior and sales conversion. SalesPredict is eBay's latest acquisition that will support its artificial intelligence, machine learning and data science efforts. It follows eBay's recent acquisition of Expertmaker, in order to further bolster our structured data efforts. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Upon the close of the transaction, a number of SalesPredict's employees will join eBay's structured data organization, working from eBay's Israeli Development Center in Netanya.

Customer attrition, also known as customer churn, customer turnover, or customer defection, is the loss of clients or customers. Banks, telephone service companies, Internet service providers, pay TV companies, insurance firms, and alarm monitoring services, often use customer attrition analysis and customer attrition rates as one of their key business metrics (along with cash flow, EBITDA, etc.) because the cost of retaining an existing customer is far less than acquiring a new one. Companies from these sectors often have customer service branches which attempt to win back defecting clients, because recovered long-term customers can be worth much more to a company than newly recruited clients. Churn prediction is one of the most popular Big Data use cases in business. It consists of detecting customers who are likely to cancel a subscription to a service.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, at left, with Jeff Immelt, CEO of GE. (Photo: Brian Smale) Microsoft and GE are joining forces to use cloud technologies in industrial production. GE will bring its Predix industrial data-gathering operating system to Microsoft's Azure cloud computing platform, the two companies announced Monday at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference in Toronto. The deal is the first in a planned strategic partnership between GE and Microsoft. "Every industry and every company around the world is being transformed by digital technology," said Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella in a statement announcing the partnership. "Working with companies like GE, we can reach a new set of customers to help them accelerate their transformation across every line of business -- from the factory floor to smart buildings."

Today eBay announced it will acquire SalesPredict, an Israel-based company that leverages advanced analytics to predict customer buying behavior and sales conversion. SalesPredict is eBay's latest acquisition that will support its artificial intelligence, machine learning and data science efforts. It follows eBay's recent acquisition of Expertmaker, in order to further bolster our structured data efforts. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Upon the close of the transaction, a number of SalesPredict's employees will join eBay's structured data organization, working from eBay's Israeli Development Center in Netanya.

Google has announced a deal to acquire Moodstock, a French startup that builds technology which helps smartphone devices recognize images and objects. The acquisition is aimed at boosting AI development of Google. Moodstock's work in computer vision and machine learning and its technology behind smartphones being able to recognize images and objects was the reason behind Google's interest. Google is among Silicon Valley titans investing in ways to get computers to see and understand the world around them the way people do. Machine learning has been woven into an array of Google offerings, such as its free language translation and photo services.

Google buys machine vision startup focusing on'instant object recognition' It's a good time to be a machine learning startup. Two weeks after Twitter bought, has purchased . The acquisition was made for an unknown sum, and seems primarily a grab for talent. Moodstocks' engineers and researchers will move to Google's Paris R&D site, and the startup's primary commercial product -- an image recognition API for smartphones -- will be phased out. "Ever since we started Moodstocks, our Read More ... Tags: Computer systems Artificial intelligence Machine intelligence Machine learning Places: Americas North America United States Google today announced it has acquired French machine learning startup Moodstocks for an undisclosed sum. The deal is expected to close in the next few weeks and seems to be focused primarily on the talent, with the team at Moodstocks moving to Google's Paris R&D site, and its image recognition API for smartphones to be gradually phased out.

Apparently, a crash related to Tesla's autopilot feature was material, before it wasn't. On Tuesday, Fortune reported that Elon Musk and Tesla Motors may have withheld a material fact from shareholders when it failed to disclose that a driver had died using the semi-self driving "autopilot" feature in one of the company's vehicles. The fatal accident, the first known case related to the autopilot feature, occurred 11 days before Musk and Tesla sold 2 billion shares in an offering on May 18. Yet the company made no mention of the crash in its offering documents. The news of the accident didn't come out until last week, when it was reported by federal highway authorities--six weeks after the offering.

Google announced today that it has acquired Paris-based Moodstocks, a startup that has developed machine learning technology to bolster the image recognition features on smartphones. "We continue to pursue our machine learning and research efforts," wrote Vincent Simonet, head of the research and development team for France Google, "and Moodstocks is the latest proof of our commitment to this area." Today, we're thrilled to announce that we've reached an agreement to join forces with Google in order to deploy our work at scale. We expect the acquisition to be completed in the next few weeks. Our focus will be to build great image recognition tools within Google, but rest assured that current paying Moodstocks customers will be able to use it until the end of their subscription.

Google announced today that it has acquired Paris-based Moodstocks, a startup that has developed machine learning technology to bolster the image recognition features on smartphones. "We continue to pursue our machine learning and research efforts," wrote Vincent Simonet, head of the research and development team for France Google, "and Moodstocks is the latest proof of our commitment to this area." "Today, we're thrilled to announce that we've reached an agreement to join forces with Google in order to deploy our work at scale. We expect the acquisition to be completed in the next few weeks. Our focus will be to build great image recognition tools within Google, but rest assured that current paying Moodstocks customers will be able to use it until the end of their subscription."

NEW DELHI: Panasonic India is scouting for companies to acquire in 6-9 months to develop artificial intelligence (AI) and Machine learning technologies, which it wants to integrate with its future smartphones to differentiate from rival vendors in the crowded yet fast growing market. The handset vendor has already set aside an initial corpus of 10 million for the development of this technology through a merger and acquisition or a joint venture. "The budget is in tune of 10 million to start with, and as we see progress on this front and things go in right direction, then there will be no constraint on the budget part. We can spend as high as possible. Some part of this budget has been generated from the India business, while some portion has been allocated from Japan," Pankaj Rana, head of mobility division, India, South Asia, Middle East and Africa at Panasonic, told ET. "Our team would be traveling to Silicon Valley soon. We will have new products ready with AI in 9-12 months. In the last three months, we have finalized what we will do and budgets have already been allocated from Panasonic Japan and Panasonic India. Now we have to find partner and start executive on timeline, while understanding the market," he said.