Accenture said the acquisition will further equip its clients with capabilities to meet the growing demand for enterprise-scale AI, analytics and automation solutions. On Friday (13 December), professional services company Accenture announced that it has entered into an agreement to acquire Clarity Insights. Clarity Insights, a Chicago-based data consultancy with deep data science, AI and machine learning expertise, will bring its 350 employees to Accenture's Applied Intelligence business in North America. Founded in 2008, Clarity Insights focuses on serving clients' needs from end to end, aiming to transform business processes to embed and scale AI with deeper insights from data. Accenture did not disclose the terms of the deal.

Accenture (NYSE: ACN) announced on Friday it has completed its acquisition of consulting firm, Silveo. According to Accenture, Silveo is a French consulting company providing services and solutions for digital manufacturing and intelligent supply chains. Accenture also noted that Silveo brings a team of 50 professionals, who are joining Accenture Industry X.0. The latest acquisition comes just after Accenture announced it has agreed to acquire Clarity Insights, a U.S.-based data consultancy with deep data science, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) expertise. Accenture claims that Clarity Insights is a leading provider of data science and AI/ML engineering capabilities for large enterprises, and a strategic partner to clients across a range of industries, particularly healthcare, financial services, and insurance.

Above the Trend Line: your industry rumor central is a recurring feature of insideBIGDATA. In this column, we present a variety of short time-critical news items grouped by category such as M&A activity, people movements, funding news, industry partnerships, customer wins, rumors and general scuttlebutt floating around the big data, data science and machine learning industries including behind-the-scenes anecdotes and curious buzz. Our intent is to provide you a one-stop source of late-breaking news to help you keep abreast of this fast-paced ecosystem. We're working hard on your behalf with our extensive vendor network to give you all the latest happenings. Be sure to Tweet Above the Trend Line articles using the hashtag: #abovethetrendline.

Accenture said the acquisition will further equip its clients with capabilities to meet the growing demand for enterprise-scale AI, analytics and automation solutions. On Friday (13 December), professional services company Accenture announced that it has entered into an agreement to acquire Clarity Insights. Clarity Insights, a Chicago-based data consultancy with deep data science, AI and machine learning expertise, will bring its 350 employees to Accenture's Applied Intelligence business in North America. Founded in 2008, Clarity Insights focuses on serving clients' needs from end to end, aiming to transform business processes to embed and scale AI with deeper insights from data. Accenture, which is headquartered in Dublin, did not disclose the terms of the deal.

"I do plan to bring back my father," Ray Kurzweil says. He is standing in the anemic light of a storage unit, his frame dwarfed by towers of cardboard boxes and oblong plastic bins. He is in his early sixties, but something about the light or his posture, his paunch protruding over his beltline, makes him seem older. Kurzweil is now a director of engineering at Google, but this documentary was filmed in 2009, back when it was still possible to regard him as a lone visionary with eccentric ideas about the future. The boxes in the storage unit contain the remnants of his father's life: photographs, letters, newspaper clippings, and financial documents. For decades, he has been compiling these artifacts and storing them in this sepulcher he maintains near his house in Newton, Massachusetts. He takes out a notebook filled with his father's handwriting and shows it to the camera. His father passed away in 1970, but Kurzweil believes that, one day, artificial intelligence will be able to use the memorabilia, along with DNA samples, to resurrect him. "People do live on in our memories, and in the creative works they leave behind," he muses, "so we can gather up all those vibrations and bring them back, I believe." Technology, Kurzweil has conceded, is still a long way from bringing back the dead. His only hope of seeing his father resurrected is to live to see the Singularity -- the moment when computing power reaches an "intelligence explosion." At this point, according to transhumanists such as Kurzweil, people who are merged with this technology will undergo a radical transformation. They will become posthuman: immortal, limitless, changed beyond recognition. Kurzweil predicts this will happen by the year 2045. Unlike his father, he, along with those of us who are lucky enough to survive into the middle of this century, will achieve immortality without ever tasting death.

In a clear signal of its ambitions in the AI chip market, Intel this morning announced that it has acquired Habana Labs, an Israel-based developer of programmable AI and machine learning accelerators for cloud datacenters. The deal is worth approximately $2 billion, and Intel says it will strengthen its AI strategy as Habana begins sampling its proprietary silicon to customers. Habana -- which raised $75 million in venture capital last November -- will remain an independent business unit and continue to be led by its current management team. It will report to Intel's data platforms group. Board chair Avigdor Willenz will serve as senior adviser to the business unit, as well as to Intel. "This acquisition advances our AI strategy, which is to provide customers with solutions to fit every performance need -- from the intelligent edge to the datacenter," said Navin Shenoy, executive vice president and general manager of the data platforms group at Intel.

Intel has acquired Tel Aviv-based artificial intelligence chip developer Habana Labs Ltd. for $2 billion, the company announced Monday. Calcalist first reported on the deal earlier this month, citing sources. Habana will continue to operate as an independent business unit under its current management team and will remain in Israel. The deal marks Intel's second-largest acquisition of an Israeli company. In March 2017, Intel announced the acquisition of Jerusalem-headquartered automotive chip developer Mobileye for $15.3 billion.

TEL AVIV (Reuters) - Walmart said on Tuesday it has acquired Aspectiva, an Israeli start-up whose technology analyses consumers' product reviews to help shoppers make decisions. Financial details were not disclosed. Aspectiva will join Walmart's Store No 8, the incubation arm launched by the U.S. retailer in 2017 to find new commerce-related technologies. Aspectiva has developed machine-learning techniques and natural language processing capabilities, "areas we believe will have profound impact on how customers will shop in the future," Store No 8 principal Lori Flees said. Walmart also has a strategic investment in Team8, an Israeli cybersecurity start-up incubator, and launched a joint venture with Eko, an interactive media and technology company with offices in Tel Aviv and New York.

Apple has acquired a startup in the UK that develops technology designed to improve smartphone photography. According to a new report from Bloomberg, Apple has acquired Spectral Edge for an undisclosed sum. Spectral Edge uses machine learning to "make smartphone pictures crisper, with more accurate colors." This works primarily by taking an infrared image and blending it with a standard photo. "Spectral Edge combines patented Image Fusion tech with Deep Learning to reveal more of the color, detail and clarity in any image," the company explained in its pitch.

BOSTON – December 12, 2019 – DataRobot, the leader in enterprise AI, today announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Paxata, the pioneer of self-service data preparation and leading data fabric provider, to fulfill its mission to build the world's first automated end-to-end enterprise AI platform. While the massive impact of AI on enterprises is well understood -- PwC forecasts by 2030 AI could contribute $15.7 trillion to the global economy -- companies must overcome several key challenges associated with AI in order to reap the benefits and become successful. Data preparation is one area that has historically held companies back. Creating a dataset for training predictive models, deploying data prep steps with AI models, and preparing data specific to AI routines are all major challenges companies face when it comes to leveraging data at scale. By providing tools that help users build automation into their data prep processes, the Paxata acquisition will alleviate these pain points for customers and dramatically enhance their ability to achieve AI-driven outcomes rapidly.