According to a recent survey, shopping by voice is expected to grow from $2 billion to $40 billion in the next four years. How far along are smart speakers right now? USA TODAY Sonos' smart speakers are a good fit for audiophiles with a penchant for technology. Speaker company Sonos has filed to go public. The company plans to list shares on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol "SONO," according to filings. It didn't specify how many shares would be up for sale or list an estimated offering price.

With little fanfare, smart speaker company Sonos has just announced it plans to go public. Sonos plans to raise $100 million in its IPO, but noted that amount was "estimated as a placeholder." Along with the announcement, the company released the requisite S-1 form through the SEC, and that contains a host of other info about the state of the company. In it, the company starts by making it clear why it thinks it can be a long-term success: "The proliferation of streaming services and the rapid adoption of voice assistants are significantly changing audio consumption habits and how consumers interact with the internet. As the leading home sound system for consumers, content partners and developers, Sonos is poised to capitalize on the large market opportunity created by these dynamics."

Deal will add pricing optimization and forecasting replenishment to supply chain software suite, JDA says. Supply chain technology firm JDA Software Group Inc. today said it has acquired the German artificial intelligence provider Blue Yonder GmbH, in a move it said would allow its Luminate platform of software products to generate more automated decisions and forecasts. Scottsdale, Ariz.-based JDA launched its Luminate platform in May, saying the platform would extend existing JDA applications by using artificial intelligence (AI) and advanced analytics to improve users' ability to predict consumer demand and deliver faster fulfillment. Adding additional AI and machine learning capabilities from the new acquisition will allow JDA users to generate autonomous, profitable business decisions and use their supply chains as a competitive advantage, particularly in the areas of pricing optimization and forecasting replenishment, JDA said. JDA did not disclose the terms of the deal, saying the acquisition had not yet closed.

Inc. Echo Spot, from left, Echo, Echo Plus, and Fire TV devices sit on display during the company's product reveal launch event in downtown Seattle, Washington, U.S., on Wednesday, Sept. 27, 2017. Amazon unveiled a smaller, cheaper version of its popular Alexa-powered Echo speaker that the e-commerce giant said has better sound. Lennar, the nation's largest homebuilder, is now building model homes with Alexa-integrated technologies such as smart doorbells, locks, thermostats, lights and integrated Wifi. Amazon and Lennar announced the partnership in May to launch "Amazon Experience Centers" around the country. In these smart homes, customers would be able to ask Alexa to do anything from turning down the lights and starting a party music playlist to turning on the doorbell video feed when someone rings.

Tessian announced today that it has raised $13 million in venture capital as the U.K.-based company seeks to address the problem of enterprise email security through automation. Formerly known by the more literal name CheckRecipient, Tessian uses machine learning to discover and fix misaddressed emails, a seemingly mundane hiccup that in fact causes big security headaches when sensitive information falls into the wrong hands. Tessian notes that the U.K.'s Information Commissioner's Office receives more security incident reports about misaddressed emails than about any other type of security issue. And new European privacy rules could result in hefty fines for such mistakes. "With the recent report from the ICO that misaddressed emails are now the number one data security incident reported to them, and GDPR now in full swing, companies should make addressing this risk a top security priority," said Tessian CEO and cofounder Tim Sadler, in a statement.

I've never been quite as fond of Japan's Fanuc (OTCPK:FANUY) (6954.T) as many readers seem to be, and over the last five years you could have done better with other automation names like Yaskawa (OTCPK:YASKY), Rockwell (ROK), Keyence (OTCPK:KYCCF), or HollySys (HOLI) (though the two-year comps are more forgiving to Fanuc). While Fanuc has done better than I'd expected over the last two years in terms of revenue growth, leveraging a strong rebound in machine tool and robomachinery orders, margins and FCF generation haven't been all that impressive as business has skewed to lower-margin products. Now there are macro clouds on the horizon. Weaker smartphone capex demands seem likely to pressure results in 2018 and we may be nearing the point of peak machine tool orders, setting the stage for what could be a nasty decline over the next few years. I do expect Fanuc to continue to see strong growth in robots and robotic components, but I'm just not excited about the valuation today given those challenges and potential risks.

Spain-based AI-powered retail intelligence platform Nextail has landed $10 million in a Series A round led by KEEN Venture Partners LLP, with participation from Sonae IM and existing investor Nauta Capital. The company plans to use the capital injection to further develop its product and double the headcount to over 100 people. Nextail focuses on the sector of fast fashion, where process optimisation is important to bring the most current designs to a store as quickly as possible. It uses AI techniques and prescriptive analytics to provide actionable insights for inventory planning and merchandising. The company claims that its clients see their sales increasing between 5-10 percent, in-store stock coverage reduced by 30 percent and stockouts reduced by 60 percent within the first 30 days of using the platform.

On April 20, 2010, when BP's deep-water drilling rig Deepwater Horizon exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, the oil giant claimed that the spill was just 1,000 barrels per day. A small non-profit in West Virginia, SkyTruth, studied the satellite observations of the oil slick, cataloged its computations, and concluded that the spill was at least 20 times bigger than what was being claimed. The report was quickly picked up by the media, and lead the US government to straightaway increase the estimate to 5,000 barrels of oil per day. The same year, UBS Investment Research had two teams quietly working on Wal-Mart's quarterly earnings preview – one using time-honored traditional methods, the other studying the satellite pictures of the American retail brand's parking lots to gauge the customer footfall. Each came up with a different revenue forecast.

PayPal has acquired its second startup in as many days, as the payments giant announced today that it was snapping up machine learning-powered fraud detection startup Simility. The transaction is valued at $120 million, in what will be an all-cash deal. The news comes two days after PayPal bought out payments startup Hyperwallet in a $400 million deal. Founded in 2014, Palo Alto-based Simility leverages machine learning to help those working in the fraud detection sphere collect and analyze data. The platform is designed to prevent myriad kinds of fraud, such as account takeover (ATO), where a bad actor tries to gain access to another person's online account. In such a scenario, Simility looks at various session, device, and behavioral biometrics and builds a profile for what constitutes "normal" user login behavior; if an anomaly is spotted, it can act to prevent the action.

Kraken Robotics, Inc. (OTCQB: KRKNF) (TSXV: PNG) is engaged as a marine technology company that develops underwater robotic systems and software-centric sensors. Shares of the underwater robotics company are rallying 35%, through early trading on Wednesday, June 20, 2018. Over the past month, Kraken Robotics, Inc. has seen average daily volume of 78,235 shares. However, volume of 155,625 shares or dollar volume of $24,121, has already exchanged hands on the day. Shares of Kraken Robotics, Inc. are climbing today after the company announced that it has received a non-brokered private placement offering with Ocean Infinity, Ltd., an offshore ocean survey and ocean exploration company.