Venture capital (VC) funding slid more deeply in AI & ML than in software overall in Q2, "falling 27.8% quarter-over-quarter (QoQ) compared to 21.6% for IT more generally." Both deal value and deal count "fell to their lowest levels since Q4 2020, also lagging the rest of IT," the report from Pitchbook revealed. Of the 70 product categories the firm tracks, "only 21 are on pace to grow in VC funding in 2022, driven by leading vertical applications including sales & marketing, information security, and drug discovery." The update from Pitchbook also mentioned that horizontal platform investment "is lagging, as outsized revenue projections face market realities, with AI-as-a service (AIaaS) investment on pace to decrease 87.7% in 2022." Numerous AI platform companies "have struggled to reach revenue forecasts in the current financial environment, creating a greater emphasis on vertical applications that can rapidly deliver value."

Chinese internet giant Baidu Inc. on Tuesday announced second-quarter revenues of 29.6 billion yuan ($4.3 billion), down five percent from last year after the company faced a challenging economic climate and tight controls on China's once-thriving tech sector. Other Chinese tech giants, including Tencent and e-commerce behemoth JD.com, had also reported disappointing results in recent weeks. China's major tech companies have been grappling with economic uncertainty, Covid-19 restrictions that have kept consumers jittery, and heightened scrutiny from regulators in recent months. Baidu, which operates China's most widely used search engine, saw revenues decrease but posted a net profit of 3.6 billion yuan ($522 million), buoyed by a 31 percent year-on-year growth in its cloud computing business. "Despite a challenging macro environment caused by Covid-19, Baidu Core generated RMB23.2 billion in revenues in the second quarter," CEO Robin Li was quoted as saying in an official press release.

Starting Monday, drive-thru customers at two Panera Bread locations in upstate New York will have their orders taken by a computer in a test of artificial intelligence technology's accuracy and ability to decrease service times. The sandwich chain is the latest restaurant company to invest in potential improvements to the drive-thru experience. A surge in drive-thru ordering during the Covid pandemic led to long lines of cars wrapped around restaurants, pushing chains to focus on speed of service and order accuracy. For example, McDonald's has also been working to automate its drive-thru lane, announcing a partnership last year with IBM to work toward that goal. Yum Brands' Taco Bell and Restaurant Brands International's Burger King have been building double drive-thru lanes at some locations to allow customers to pick up their digital orders more quickly.

Amazon has reportedly made a bid to buy Electronic Arts (EA), the US video game company behind the hugely successful FIFA series. According to Stockholm-based gaming content agency GLHF, Amazon will confirm its bid to take over the gaming firm on Friday. Rumours have circulated since the spring that EA had been looking to be acquired by a large company, including Disney, Apple or Amazon. The rumoured takeover was first reported by USA Today, which said'Amazon has finally made an offer', citing GLHF as its source. Such a purchase could broaden Amazon's push into sports, following its purchase of live streaming rights of NFL and the Premier League on its Prime platform.

We mined Apple's acquisitions, investments, and partnerships to discern the company's emerging strategic priorities. Apple is looking for the next big thing. As the world's most valuable company, with a $2T market cap and over $100B in annual profit, Apple has long been known for its cell phones, laptops, tablets, and watches. Today, the company is investing aggressively in high-tech areas like AR/VR, AI, and semiconductors to lay the groundwork for products and features that affect health & wellness, mobility, digital connections, and more. Download our full report to find out the top trends poised to reshape industries in 2022.

Models for bankruptcy prediction are useful in several real-world scenarios, and multiple research contributions have been devoted to the task, based on structured (numerical) as well as unstructured (textual) data. However, the lack of a common benchmark dataset and evaluation strategy impedes the objective comparison between models. This paper introduces such a benchmark for the unstructured data scenario, based on novel and established datasets, in order to stimulate further research into the task. We describe and evaluate several classical and neural baseline models, and discuss benefits and flaws of different strategies. In particular, we find that a lightweight bag-of-words model based on static in-domain word representations obtains surprisingly good results, especially when taking textual data from several years into account. These results are critically assessed, and discussed in light of particular aspects of the data and the task. All code to replicate the data and experimental results will be released.

Silverback United, announced the acquisition of UK based Headstart AI, Inc. in an all-stock transaction. The acquisition will be immediately accretive and will accelerate its strategy for the assetization of data on a global basis. Spear Point Advisors, LLC ("Spear Point") served as Silverback's exclusive financial advisor for the transaction. IonQ an industry leader in quantum computing,announced a collaboration with Airbus to explore the potential application and benefits of quantum computing for aerospace services and passenger experiences. The Quantum Aircraft Loading Optimization & Quantum Machine Learning project will be a 12-month project that culminates in the development of a prototype aircraft-loading quantum application, hands-on collaboration and coaching sessions for Airbus developers and engineers, and an exploration of future integrations of quantum computers for Airbus and its customers.

Four years ago, the $70 billion Alibaba Group, one of the world's biggest artificial intelligence users, teamed up with Mars, the $35 billion global leader in confectioneries, to figure out the types of candy and chocolates that consumers in China prefer. The fresh consumer data that Alibaba continually gathers from the millions of people shopping on its various platforms turned up the counterintuitive finding that many Chinese who buy chocolates also purchase spicy snacks at the same time. Using that data-driven insight, Mars developed a sweet-and-spicy product: a candy bar that contains Szechuan peppercorns, the source of China's spicy "mala" flavor. Even though Mars didn't conduct any other consumer research to reinforce the A.I.-driven insight, Spicy Snickers proved to be a winner on the mainland. Depending on A.I. also saved the company time; instead of the two to three years that it normally takes to launch a product, Mars was able to bring Spicy Snickers to market for the first time in August 2017, less than 12 months after the collaboration with Alibaba started.

The company that owns the rights to JRR Tolkien's works, including The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, has been bought by the Swedish gaming firm Embracer Group, which has hinted it could make spin-off films based on popular characters such as Gandalf, Aragorn and Gollum. Embracer has acquired Middle-earth Enterprises, the holding company that controls the intellectual property rights to films, video games, board games, merchandise, theme parks and stage productions relating to Tolkien's two most famous literary franchises. The deal also includes "matching rights" in other Middle-earth-related literary works authorised by the Tolkien Estate and HarperCollins – primarily The Silmarillion and The Unfinished Tales of Numenor and Middle-earth – which were published after Tolkien's death in 1973. When the business was put up for sale by the Saul Zaentz Company, which acquired its rights from the heirs and estate of Tolkien and HarperCollins in 1976, it was expected that Amazon would buy it to build its own Middle-earth empire. In 2017, Amazon paid $250m (£208m) for the rights to make a big budget prequel to Lord of the Rings, called Rings of Power, which is to have a global release on its Prime Video service on 2 September.

I recently announced that I would no longer be actively maintaining audiobridge and would be sunsetting the app on December 31, 2022 after over five years of work. With this announcement, I had conversations with many people about a potential acquisition of the company. I felt that there still is nobody that truly understands what is possible in the field of mobile music/audio creation and the ramifications it would have for many other industries. I will not be selling. After quite a bit of reflection, I have decided to not sunset the app although it will continue to be largely unmaintained for the foreseeable future.