SAN JOSE, Calif., Jan. 25, 2019 -- Guavus, a Thales company and pioneer in Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based analytics, announced today that it has acquired SQLstream, a real-time streaming analytics company based in San Francisco, CA. The acquisition enables Guavus to expand its offering, providing communications service providers (CSPs) and Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) customers access – at the network edge – to real-time, cloud-enabled streaming analytics to address their growing big data needs. "With our integrated solutions, CSPs to IIoT customers will be able to take advantage of something that's radically different as we deliver AI-powered analytics from the network edge to the network core. With this solution, our customers can now analyze their operational, customer, and business data anywhere in the network in real time, without manual intervention, so they can make better decisions, provide smarter new services, and reduce their costs," said Guavus CEO, Faizel Lakhani. "In a world facing exponential growth in the volume of data coming from increasingly connected network devices and IIoT-based sensors, the inclusion of SQLstream's industry-leading technology opens up huge new opportunities for our customers and our partners. Their disruptive technology allows customers to interactively inspect and curate streaming data for analytics at the edge. We're excited to have the SQLstream team onboard," said Lakhani.

When it comes to deep tech, from AI to big data and AR, Europe is neck and neck with Asia and Silicon Valley. European deep-tech start-ups demonstrate the best opportunities for scaling up. And, according to the recent State of European Tech report, Europe's tech industry is growing five times faster than the rest of the European economy in terms of gross value added, a level that has accelerated in recent years. Last year, our Europe Start-up 100 2018 list looked at various players demonstrating how Europe is gathering momentum in areas such as artificial intelligence (AI), autonomous vehicles (AVs), augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), robotics, big data and more. This listing is part of our Europe Start-up 100 series for 2019, which every day this week is focusing on a different list, including fintech and e-commerce, hardware and the internet of things (IoT), and medtech and life sciences start-ups. On Friday (25 January), we will publish our full Europe Start-up 100 list of the ones to watch.

A revolution is happening right before our eyes. It's groundbreaking, and yet its disruptive power is only fractionally visible. With each passing second and each bit of new data, computers are getting smarter and smarter. Ubiquitous and quiet, machine learning algorithms are watching us, gathering information about our preferences, lifestyle, and habits. Consciously or unconsciously, we feel the benefits of these algorithms while lazing on our couches, clicking away on insightful recommendations for which movies to watch, books to read, and products to buy.

Cision Ltd. (NYSE: CISN) is buying TrendKite Inc. for $225 million. TrendKite uses artificial intelligence to help communications professionals assess the impact of their efforts. "TrendKite and Cision have a shared understanding of the communications industry's need to quantify the business value of earned media campaigns," says TrendKite CEO Erik Huddleston. "The combination of TrendKite's rich analytics platform and the Cision Communications Cloud platform will powerfully impact our joint customer base with the most robust, end-to-end Earned Media Management solution available." Buyers are hot on the trail of innovations, including artificial intelligence, that will drive sustainable value to customers and make companies more efficient, more effective and less expensive to run.

From CCN.com: UiPath, an artificial intelligence (AI) startup first backed by Google's CapitalG fund in 2018 will shortly, according to leaked reports, achieve over 5000% growth. Business Insider sources claim UiPath, also backed by Sequoia Capital and Accel, is set to hit $200 million annual recurring revenue (ARR). ARR is a metric used by software-as-a-service (SaaS) providers to reflect subscription revenues. The ARR figure for UiPath was just $3.5 million in 2016. Its ARR hit $150 million in November 2018.

Similarly, an Indian travel start-up, RailYatri, has created an Estimated Arrival Time prediction algorithm using Machine Learning and statistical modelling techniques to predict the arrival time of trains. The system, trained on historical data, can provide customers with realistic estimated times for the arrival of their trains. According to Kapil Raizada, Cofounder of RailYatri, the method to predict the arrival time of trains in India had not changed over decades and was typically based on a distance by speed ratio for trains with some buffer time. RailYatri's Machine Learning algorithm takes into considerations other parameters ("ground realities") such as increasing traffic, rush, seasonality, etc, and adapts as it learns from subsequent inputs, making the predictions better with time. It uses clustering techniques to organise historical train runs into thousands of patterns where time series data attributes are similar.

MUMBAI: Private equity firm Apax Partners has signed a definitive agreement to invest as much as $200 million to become the single largest shareholder in Fractal Analytics, India's second largest big data firm. The transaction, which consists of a secondary stake acquired from existing shareholders such as Malayasian sovereign investor of Khazanah and T.A. Associates besides a primary investment into the business, both the companies said in a statement. Though not disclosed, sources tell ET, Apax will end up with a significant minority stake of around 45%. The deal is expected to get closed by February 2019, the statement said. ET first reported about the potential transaction in its edition dated Jan 4. The company will use the investment by the Apax Funds to accelerate growth, both organically and through M&A, and to invest further in AI products and research.

DETROIT - Volkswagen AG and Ford Motor Co. said on Tuesday they will join forces on commercial vans and pickups and are exploring joint development of electric and self-driving technology in moves meant to save the automakers billions of dollars. Ford and VW announced their partnership against the backdrop of the Detroit auto show. The tie-up, which starts with sales of vans and medium-sized pickups in 2022, will not involve a merger or equity stakes, the companies said. "It is no secret that our industry is undergoing fundamental change, resulting from widespread electrification, ever stricter emission regulation, digitization, the shift towards autonomous driving, and not least the changing customer preferences," Volkswagen Chief Executive Herbert Diess told reporters and analysts on a conference call. "Carmakers around the globe therefore are investing heavily to align their portfolios to future needs and accelerate their innovation cycles," he added.

Compared to a few years ago, the artificial intelligence (AI) market is starting to solidify around real-world applications with the pace of change being faster than it has ever been before, as startups and technology providers rush to create platforms and targeted niche solutions for solving specific enterprise problems. According to a new report from Tractica, the industry is churning and evolving quickly as merger and acquisition (M&A) activities abound, and it is homing in on areas of focus. Tractica's research has identified more than 1,000 companies that are driving innovation in the AI market, some of whom are well-known technology heavyweights but many of which are emerging solution providers that are focused on tailored AI applications to serve tactical business needs in specific industries. "The AI ecosystem is a tangled web of traditional technology providers that have adapted to shifting trends and new market entrants focused on using AI for solving problems in niche areas, in addition to well-established internet-era hyperscaler companies that are spearheading the push toward AI-first organizations," says research analyst Sherril Hanson. The key categories of companies in Tractica's mapping of the AI market ecosystem are as follows: Tractica's report, "Artificial Intelligence Market Ecosystem", provides an in-depth examination of the market ecosystem for AI.

We dive into the strategies Microsoft is pursuing across cloud, enterprise IT, AI, gaming, and more to see how the company is positioning itself for the future. As the world's most valuable company, and with a current market cap hovering around $780B, Microsoft may be the next company to reach the $1T threshold. While it may not grab as many headlines as its buzzier tech giant counterparts, the company is quietly adapting across its core business areas, led by a future-focused Satya Nadella. Since assuming the CEO role in 2014, Nadella has deprioritized the Windows offering that initially helped Microsoft become a household name, refocusing the company's efforts on implementing AI across all its products and services. That's not the only change: in addition to an increased focus on AI, cloud and subscription services have become unifying themes across products. And to maintain its dominance in enterprise technology, Microsoft is expanding in new areas -- like gaming and personal computing -- that leverage the company's own cloud infrastructure. Below, we outline Microsoft's key priorities, initiatives, investments, and acquisitions across its various business segments. The majority of Microsoft's revenue comes from its enterprise technologies, which fall under its Intelligent Cloud and Productivity & Business Processes segments. The Productivity & Business Processes segment includes software products like Office 365, Skype, LinkedIn, and Microsoft's ERP (enterprise resource planning) and CRM (customer relationship management) platform, Dynamic 365. Microsoft's Intelligence Cloud segment includes cloud platform Azure, the Visual Studio developer platform, and Windows Server, a version of Microsoft's proprietary operating system optimized for running in the cloud. Outside of enterprise technology, Microsoft generates revenue from products like Xbox and Microsoft Surface, among others areas. These products are bucketed into the company's More Personal Computing segment. In addition to its in-house efforts, Microsoft has a number of initiatives that look to support promising young businesses. These include Microsoft's venture capital arm, M12, Microsoft's accelerator, ScaleUp, and other initiatives like Microsoft for Startups.