As AI is increasingly incorporated into our workplaces and daily lives, it is poised to fundamentally upend the way we live and work. Concern over this looming shift is widespread. A recent survey of 5,700 Harvard Business School alumni found that 52% of even this elite group believe the typical company will employ fewer workers three years from now. The advent of AI poses new and unique challenges for business leaders. They must continue to deliver financial performance, while simultaneously making significant investments in hiring, workforce training, and new technologies that support productivity and growth.

Diligent Robotics today announced the close of a $10 million round to expand its fleet of nurse assistant robots for hospitals. The round was led by DNX Ventures, with participation from True Ventures, Ubiquity Ventures, Next Coast Ventures, Grit Ventures, E14 Fund, and Promus Ventures. Moxi is designed to reduce nurse workloads by handling tasks like collecting supplies, gathering soiled linens, and delivering fresh ones, and it's coming to market during the COVID-19 crisis, when nurses are in short supply. In addition to tackling mundane aspects of the job, the robot can also help reduce health care professionals' exposure to disease. Moxi was created by Diligent Robotics at University of Texas, Austin by CEO Dr. Andrea Thomaz, a roboticist and professor who previously ran the Georgia Tech Socially Intelligent Machines Lab. "It's a really good time to be working on this problem," Thomaz told VentureBeat in a phone interview.

Perhaps no area of tech has been more buzzy in recent years than the shiny sector of artificial intelligence startups. That happy innovation workshop may have just hit hard times. AI execs and investors say market volatility and regulations clamping down on data may soon lead to AI startups getting gobbled up by companies with cash and data to burn. The market intelligence firm CB Insights said in a report this year that the 100 best-funded startups in artificial intelligence have raised over $7.4B in funding across 300 deals from 600 unique investors. Now as the market skyrockets, then plummets in extreme volatility amid the coronavirus crisis, that may be endangered.

BERLIN, Nov 21 (Reuters) - German data mining software firm Celonis said on Thursday that it had raised $290 mln in a Series C funding round, putting a $2.5 billion valuation on the company that has been compared with enterprise application giant SAP . The funding round was led by Arena Holdings and investors included Ryan Smith, the founder of customer experience specialist Qualtrics that was bought by SAP for $8 billion a year ago. Celonis, based in Munich and New York, runs a cloud-based service that uses artificial intelligence to mine data and optimise business processes, serving customers including Siemens, 3M, Airbus and Vodafone. "We are in a market that shows enormous momentum," co-CEO and co-founder Bastian Nominacher told Reuters, adding that Celonis would invest the funds raised in its global sales and customer service and in enhancing its cloud platform. The funding round brings total investments into Celonis to $370 million.

Accenture Completes Acquisition of Mudano, Enhancing Its Analytics and Data Transformation Services to Financial Services Firms in the UK LONDON; Feb. 28, 2020 – Accenture (NYSE: ACN) has completed its acquisition of Mudano, a strategic data consultancy to U.K. financial services firms. The acquisition enhances Accenture's analytics, data and artificial intelligence (AI) transformation capabilities. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed. Mudano's team of industry-focused data professionals will join Accenture Applied Intelligence. Mudano was founded in 2014 and is headquartered in London, with a presence in Edinburgh, Scotland. About Accenture Accenture is a leading global professional services company, providing a broad range of services and solutions in strategy, consulting, digital, technology and operations.

In the stampede to build an AI strategy, executives fall into four main traps. It's almost impossible to pick up a trade journal, hear a start-up pitch or listen to a quarterly earnings call without hearing the two magic letters: AI. Over the past few years, interest in artificial intelligence has rocketed with no sign of abating. But in the stampede to build an AI strategy, executives fall into the following four main traps. As boards and corporations are flush with AI fever, they tend to speak of AI as one all-encompassing technology.

QuickBooks is accessible from any web browser or through the mobile app. And it only takes about five minutes to get up and running. Intuit is infusing its QuickBooks platform with artificial intelligence aimed at guiding small businesses through projecting cash flow, tracking expenses and mileage, and performance ratios. Unveiled at Intuit's QuickBooks Connect conference, the company outlined an approach that rhymes with how it has automated tax preparation. QuickBooks is aiming to enable small business owners and self-employed workers to use AI to automate back-office work, ease commerce, and introduce performance metrics.

Cloud data storage and management platform SwiftStack announced Thursday that it had agreed to be acquired by graphics processing and artificial intelligence (AI) specialist NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA). SwiftStack offers cloud storage capabilities that are already deeply embedded with NVIDIA's DGX server and supercomputer, which are specifically built to accelerate AI applications, helping to support large-scale AI and machine learning deployments. The terms of the deal were not disclosed, but in three previous funding rounds, SwiftStack had raised $23.6 million from the likes of Mayfield Fund, OpenView Venture Partners, Storm Ventures, and UMC Capital. The deal is expected to close in the coming weeks. The company joined NVIDIA's partner network in mid-2019 as a solution provider for AI and machine learning.

With the rise of zero-dollar commissions at custodians and low cost robo-advisors, the financial industry--and Financial Advisors--are at a competitive disadvantage to artificial intelligence. By 2030, an estimated 80% of heritage financial services companies will go out of business, struggle for relevance, fail to use technology to change their business model, or become commoditized. Real Intelligence LLC is warning Financial Planners of this potential outcome plagued by technology enhancements, like robo-advisors. Real Intelligence, however, is executing a real-time solution that provides a patented dynamic mapping system in conjunction with human effort. "Thirty percent of advisors will exit the business in three to five years," predicts Jeff Mount, president of Real Intelligence.

Nvidia today announced that it has acquired SwiftStack, a software-centric data storage and management platform that supports public cloud, on-premises and edge deployments. The company's recent launches focused on improving its support for AI, high-performance computing and accelerated computing workloads, which is surely what Nvidia is most interested in here. "Building AI supercomputers is exciting to the entire SwiftStack team," says the company's co-founder and CPO Joe Arnold in today's announcement. "We couldn't be more thrilled to work with the talented folks at NVIDIA and look forward to contributing to its world-leading accelerated computing solutions." The two companies did not disclose the price of the acquisition, but SwiftStack had previously raised about $23.6 million in Series A and B rounds led by Mayfield Fund and OpenView Venture Partners.