Products developed to manage artificial intelligence data are still largely fragmented, solving one problem at a time for developers, but not the entire life cycle. Enter Sama, a company providing high-quality training data that powers AI technology applications. CEO Wendy Gonzalez said the company is developing the first end-to-end AI tool for training data through machine learning. To do this, the company secured an oversubscribed $70 million in Series B financing led by Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec (CDPQ), with participation from First Ascent Ventures, Salesforce Ventures, Vistara Growth and all existing investors. The new capital infusion comes two years after the company raised $14.8 million in a Series A round.

Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) and Palantir (NYSE:PLTR) operate in different sectors, but both tech companies are profiting from the secular expansion of the artificial intelligence (AI) market. Nvidia's GPUs are often associated with video games, but a growing number of data centers are installing its high-end GPUs to process AI tasks. Palantir's data mining platforms accumulate and process data from disparate sources to help government agencies and big companies make AI-driven decisions. Both companies have generated impressive gains over the past 12 months. Nvidia's stock more than doubled as it continued to sell more gaming and data center GPUs. Palantir's stock soared about 160% as it dazzled investors with its robust revenue growth rates and optimistic long-term targets.

McDonald's is partnering with IBM to implement artificial intelligence tech to take orders at its drive-thru lanes. "In my mind, IBM is the ideal partner for McDonald's given their expertise in building AI-powered customer care solutions and voice recognition," McDonald's CEO Chris Kempczinski said during a Wednesday earnings call, as quoted by CNBC. It's arguably the last thing we need: the kind of frustration we get from trying to communicate with AI-powered software -- cough, Siri -- could make anybody rip their hair out the next time they hit up a fast food joint. And that's not to mention losing more human jobs to automated systems, a worrying trend that's already well underway. In 2019, the restaurant chain bought a tech startup called Apprente and renamed it McD Tech Labs.

The Morning Ledger provides daily news and insights on corporate finance from the CFO Journal team. Private-equity firm Permira and the Canadian Pension Plan Investment Board in 2015 took the company private in a transaction valued at $5.3 billion after roughly 15 years as a public company. The company has since moved its on-premises products to a cloud-based platform and built a subscription business. Permira and CPPIB will control about 85% of the company after its IPO. Informatica, which lists drugmaker Eli Lilly & Co., consumer-goods giant Unilever PLC and supermarket chain Kroger Co. among its customers, helps companies connect and manage their data across the cloud and on-premise systems, allowing organizations to better analyze the data they collect.

… RADR® artificial intelligence ("A.I.") platform to transform the cost, … A.I. platform and machine learning to discover biomarker signatures …

FACT-Finder, a company that offers ecommerce companies tools to personalize their site with things like AI-driven recommendations, said it has acquired Loop54, a company that provides personalized search results. It's the latest in a trend of consolidation in the ecommerce world, where a host of companies arose to offer personalization with new technologies like AI, but now the bigger companies are gobbling up the smaller ones -- and specifically in the ecommerce software-as-a-service (SaaS) search market. On the smaller side, we reported last week on Coveo's acquisition of AI-powered personalization provider Qubit. On the much bigger side, yesterday, reports emerged that PayPal is making a $45 billion bid for e-commerce giant Pinterest. "With the expertise and unique approach that our new colleagues at Loop54 bring to the table, we will significantly expand our market leadership and push the bounds of what is possible in e-commerce," said Emile Bloemen, CEO of FACT-Finder.

This Commodities Package is designed for investors who need commodity recommendations to find the best performing commodities in the industry. Package Name: Commodities Recommended Positions: Long Forecast Length: 1 Month (9/12/21 – 10/12/21) I Know First Average: 12.32% In this 1 Month forecast for the Commodities Package, there were many high performing trades and the algorithm correctly predicted 10 out of 10 trades. The prediction with the highest return was BCOMCO1T, at 15.53%. BCOMCL2T and BCOMCL3T also performed well for this time horizon with returns of 15.17% and 14.54%, respectively. The package had an overall average return of 12.32% during the period.

WIRE)--Alation Inc., the leader in enterprise data intelligence solutions, today announced the acquisition of Lyngo Analytics, a Los Altos, Calif.-based data insights company. The acquisition will elevate the business user experience within the data catalog, scale data intelligence, and help organizations drive data culture. Lyngo Analytics CEO and co-founder Jennifer Wu and CTO and co-founder Joachim Rahmfeld will join the company. Lyngo Analytics uses a natural language interface to empower users to discover data and insights by asking questions using simple, familiar business terms. Alation offers the most intelligent and user-friendly machine-learning data catalog on the market.

Genesys, a global cloud leader in customer experience orchestration, announced that it has entered into agreements to acquire Pointillist and Exceed.ai to enhance its ability to deliver the power of empathy in every customer experience as it executes on the promise of Experience as a ServiceSM. Both transactions are expected to close before the end of the calendar year 2021. Genesys pioneered Experience as a Service to help companies transform how they connect with customers and employees. Companies need new technologies and artificial intelligence (AI) to orchestrate end-to-end, meaningful experiences with the objective of driving trust and loyalty. This experience orchestration provides superior business outcomes, as companies embrace more contextual, predictive and relevant experiences with every point of customer or employee contact.

General Motors secured its pivot to a high-tech future Wednesday by announcing plans to convert more assembly plants in North America to make electric vehicles by the end of the decade and to double company revenues by that time as it unveils more software and new EVs. GM leaders are expected to reveal new technology, such as an advancement to the automaker's hands-free driving system, as well as more EV products, including a new Chevrolet SUV EV priced at $30,000, during its annual Investor Day presentation, starting at 1 p.m. ET. "Our early investments in these growth trends have transformed GM from automaker to platform innovator, with customers at the center," said CEO Mary Barra. "GM will use its hardware and software platforms to innovate and improve their daily experience, leading everybody on the journey to an all-electric future." Barra emphasized that no hourly workers will lose their jobs in the transition to electric and GM continues to hire salaried employees who have a background in technology and digital software. "Late last year we hired 3,000 employees and this year alone we've hired 8,000 salaried workers especially in the technology, digital and the software space," Barra said.