Conversational messaging platform Gupshup announced the acquisition of Active.Ai, a conversational AI platform used by banks and fintech firms. The sum was not disclosed. The acquisition aims to strengthen Gupshup's customer experience solutions for its banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI) customers. Headquartered in Singapore, Active.Ai serves BFSI customers across 43 countries with its Conversational Banking as a Service (CBaaS) platform. Active.Ai said it has enabled more than 300 million user interactions via voice, video and messaging, managed over 30 million service requests and fulfilled 50 million plus enquiries in aggregate, with 95 percent accuracy.

Ready or not, autonomous driving car features are coming. Starting with model year 2024, Nvidia's ( NVDA -2.10%) DRIVE Orin chip and sensor system will be available for use among automakers. But there are other ways to play the development of vehicle autonomy. One of them is small chip designer Ambarella ( AMBA -2.35%). After more than doubling its stock price over the last three years (which includes the recent 60%-plus sell-off from all-time highs), Ambarella is putting up solid numbers as its computer vision chips find their way into more automaker technology designs.

Intel's Ponte Vecchio processor uses advanced packaging techniques the chipmaker plans to offer automakers, too. Intel on Thursday announced a new division to design and sell chips that will help carmakers modernize vehicles and the processors that power them. The chipmaker is trying to cash in on a fast-growing market for the semiconductors it builds. For automakers, processors in 2019 represented 4% of a car's cost, but it's going to soar to 20% by 2030, Intel predicts. That's because cars are becoming computers on wheels, with developments like autonomous vehicle technology, driver assistance features like automatic emergency braking, chips that monitor everything from tire pressure to battery temperature, and ever fancier dashboard displays and entertainment systems.

SparkCognition, a global leader in artificial intelligence (AI) software solutions perfected for business, is pleased to announce it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Integration Wizards, a leader in visual AI. Through this acquisition, SparkCognition expands its IP portfolio to include computer vision capabilities, bringing greater value to its industry solutions. The technology leverages new and diverse data sets, including CCTV feeds, drone footage, video from handheld devices, and existing camera infrastructures. The solution can be deployed in hours or days, and helps address critical problems, including safety, security, visual inspection, productivity, and situational awareness. "With advanced visual AI that can recognize complex scenes and activities we further amplify the value we deliver to our customers while leveraging existing infrastructure investments," said Amir Husain, Founder and CEO of SparkCognition.

Snowflake is getting new feature stores, as an increasing number of enterprise teams look at the data company to build and deploy machine learning applications. In a statement on Wednesday, Tecton announced a partnership with the data giant under which the former's feature store, known for managing the complete lifecycle of machine learning (ML) features, as well as the open-source one from Feast will be integrated with the Snowflake Data Cloud. The move, as the companies explained, will give enterprise data scientists a fast yet simple way to build production-grade features for a broad range of operational ML use cases, starting from fraud detection and product recommendation to real-time price tracking. Enterprises using cloud data platforms (such as Snowflake) for ML projects can run into issues such as distinct pipelines during implementation or training data leakages/inaccuracies. This can slow the development time, affecting the delivery of the project.

Alife Health, the fertility technology company building artificial intelligence tools to advance in-vitro fertilization (IVF), announced today it has raised $22 million in Series A financing co-led by existing Seed lead Deena Shakir at Lux Capital, and new investors Rebecca Kaden at Union Square Ventures and Anarghya Vardhana at Maveron, both of whom will also be joining Alife's Board of Directors. Alife's mission is to enhance IVF clinical decision-making with personalized, data-driven patient insights, ultimately helping clinicians maximize each patient's chances of success while lowering costs and barriers to access. Today, the 180 million people around the world who struggle with infertility face treatment options that are both expensive and inaccessible. The average IVF cycle can cost up to $25,000 in the U.S., and patients typically go through 3 to 5 cycles to have a baby. Successful pregnancies from IVF rely on a complex set of clinical decisions to deliver the optimal care for each patient.

Since 1999, Amazon's disruptive bravado has made "getting Amazoned" a fear for executives in any sector the tech giant sets its sights on. Here are the industries that could be under threat next. Jeff Bezos once famously said, "Your margin is my opportunity." Today, Amazon is finding opportunities in industries that would have been unthinkable for the company to attack even a few years ago. Throughout the 2000s, Amazon's e-commerce dominance paved a path of destruction through books, music, toys, sports, and a range of other retail verticals. Big box stores like Toys "R" Us, Sports Authority, and Barnes & Noble -- some of which had thrived for more than a century -- couldn't compete with Amazon's ability to combine uncommonly fast shipping with low prices. Today, Amazon's disruptive ambitions extend far beyond retail. With its expertise in complex supply chain logistics and competitive advantage in data collection, Amazon is attacking a whole host of new industries. The tech giant has ...

Run:ai, the company simplifying AI infrastructure orchestration and management, today announced that it has raised $75M in Series C round led by Tiger Global Management and Insight Partners, who led the previous Series B round. The round includes the participation of additional existing investors, TLV Partners and S Capital VC, bringing the total funding raised to date to $118M. Run:ai has grown sharply, with a 9x increase in Annual Recurring Revenue in the last year, while the company's staff more than tripled over the same period. The company plans to use the investment to further grow its global teams and will also be considering strategic acquisitions as it develops and enhances the company's Atlas software platform. Omri Geller, Run:ai CEO and co-founder, said, "It may sound dramatic, but AI is really the next phase of humanity's development. When we founded Run:ai, our vision was to build the de-facto foundational layer for running any AI workload. Our growth has been phenomenal, and this investment is a vote of confidence in our path. Run:ai is enabling organizations to orchestrate all stages of their AI work at scale, so companies can begin their AI journey and innovate faster."

Artificial intelligence (AI) is often used as a buzzword when companies are trying to sell their product. They often have some form of AI, but it really isn't as much of a game-changer as it is hyped up to be. However, three businesses with real AI products making a difference in the industry are Nvidia ( NVDA -2.46%), CrowdStrike ( CRWD -0.25%), and C3.ai ( AI -9.82%). This trio of stocks is highly diversified and gives investors three different avenues to approach an investment in AI. Nvidia provides the hardware powering AI technology, CrowdStrike uses AI in cybersecurity, and C3.ai's tools help enterprises predict the future across a massive organization. When deployed correctly, artificial intelligence can make a huge difference in a product, and each of these businesses achieves that.

Microsoft has completed its acquisition of Siri backend creator Nuance in a bumper deal that it says will usher in a "new era of outcomes-based AI". "Completion of this significant and strategic acquisition brings together Nuance's best-in-class conversational AI and ambient intelligence with Microsoft's secure and trusted industry cloud offerings," said Scott Guthrie, Executive Vice President of the Cloud AI Group at Microsoft. "This powerful combination will help providers offer more affordable, effective, and accessible healthcare, and help organisations in every industry create more personalised and meaningful customer experiences. I couldn't be more pleased to welcome the Nuance team to our Microsoft family." Nuance became a household name (in techie households, anyway) for creating the speech recognition engine that powers Apple's smart assistant, Siri. However, Nuance has been in the speech recognition business since 2001 when it was known as ScanSoft.