Weather Analytics, a US-based provider of risk information for insurance carriers, has acquired and merged with Athenium. The new entity will operate as Athenium Analytics. Athenium software currently helps carriers assess performance of both claims and underwriting. Following the deal, the combined companies will invest $25 million to build a new decision-support software for insurers, enabled by artificial intelligence and computer-vision capabilities. These new programmes will include advanced mobile applications for crop insurance, tools to more efficiently insure small businesses, and models to assess risk in workers' comp for diverse business classifications.

WIRE)-- 8x8, Inc. (NYSE:EGHT), a leading provider of cloud phone, meeting, collaboration and contact center solutions, today announced the acquisition of MarianaIQ (MIQ), a high-growth Silicon Valley startup, as part of the strategic investments it has been making in AI and Machine Learning. MIQ brings deep learning capabilities to the newly announced X Series to transform both employee and customer experience. The MIQ team, including founders Soumyadeb Mitra and Venkat Nagaswamy, have been leaders in applying AI and deep learning to practical business problems since 2013, and join 8x8 to strengthen AI capabilities for enterprise communications. "8x8 has continuously evolved itself to provide best-in-class enterprise communications to our customers. With the acquisition of MarianaIQ, we are fundamentally transforming how customers and employees interact through one system of engagement, and how companies optimize valuable moments of customer engagement with one set of data in one system of intelligence," said Dejan Deklich, Chief Product Officer, 8x8.

The business has been lucrative for the biggest player, InterActiveCorp and its listed subsidiary, Match Group, which owns Tinder, OkCupid and Match.com. That explains why shares of IAC and Match nose-dived 20% and 25%, respectively, when Mark Zuckerberg said Facebook would enter the dating scene. IAC and Match just offered a strong retort, posting first-quarter earnings that beat analysts' expectations. IAC, which owns 22% of Match and brands including ANGI Homeservices and Vimeo, reported revenue of $995 million, topping estimates for $922 million. Match Group, its largest subsidiary, grew 36% year-over-year to $407 million, notching the highest quarterly revenue growth since it went public in November 2015.

We are in the midst of a technological revolution. The increased use of artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, blockchain, and big data technologies is rapidly changing the asset management industry. A recent survey on the future of the hedge fund industry by the Alternative Investment Management Association (AIMA) found that new "statistical and computational tools, including advanced quantitative techniques and artificial intelligence is forcing hedge fund firms to re-evaluate how they operate and invest." So how are manager selection and due diligence changing as a result of these new technologies? For insight on this question, we met with Michael Oliver Weinberg, CFA, chief investment officer of MOV37 and Protégé Partners, to discuss the evolution of the manager selection and due diligence processes. Protégé and MOV37 are specialized asset management firms that invest in smaller hedge funds and selected emerging managers. Founded in 2002, Protégé has been a key market player in supporting the growth of the hedge fund industry through seed deals and capital allocations to discretionary managers.

Match Group, which also owns dating apps OkCupid, Match.com and Plenty of Fish, reported a profit of $99.74 million for the quarter ended March 31, compared with a profit of $20.05 million a year earlier. Analysts had projected profit of $56 million, according to a survey by FactSet. Revenue increased to $407.37 million, from $298.76 million a year ago. Analysts had forecast $386 million in revenue. Revenue at Tinder increased more than 150% compared with a year ago.

To grow market share, many cloud service providers (CSPs) are introducing specialized compute instances, which target data-intensive workloads and ease the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) into enterprise business applications as a strategy to capture market share. This type of activity is expanding the high-growth cloud-as-a-service (CaaS) and platform-as-a-service (PaaS) segments. The off-premises cloud service market is expected to reach $374 billion in 2022, at a five-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 17.7 percent. Innovative service offerings by CSPs are multiplying, including the introduction of blockchain technology in PaaS service offers. They are also introducing new services focused on enterprise verticals, including the following: healthcare, to aid diagnosis; energy, for oil and gas exploration; financial services, for transaction monitoring; and supply chain efficiencies in retail and government, for smart city infrastructure.

The roughly €19 billion deal would face a possibly lengthy European Union antitrust review, but if completed, would create one of the continent's biggest telecommunications operators, selling the industry's holy grail "quad-play" package: cable, internet, wireless and landline-phone service on a single bill. The Financial Times reported earlier Tuesday the two companies were nearing a deal. The deal would represent the latest in a global trend of wireless carriers acquiring cable operations, or vice versa, to offer quad-play packages. Wireless carriers need high-speed cable networks to quickly transmit data to cellular towers for 5G, the coming generation of mobile networks that promise to be fast enough to enable near-instantaneous movie downloads and innovations such as self-driving cars. Both companies have said they have engaged in various forms of merger talks with each other in recent years.

All participants will be in listen-only mode. I would now like to turn the conference over to Steve Walsh, Director of Investor Relations. A copy of the news release is available on the Investor Relations page of our website, which can be found at investors.emcins.com. The archived audio webcast will be available for replay for approximately 90 days following the earnings call. This presentation includes some forward-looking statements about our expectations for our future performance. These statements are not guarantees of future performance and actual results could differ materially from those suggested by our comments today due to a variety of factors. Additional information about factors that could affect future results is addressed in our SEC filings, including Forms S-1, 10-K, 10-Q and 8-K.

Let's be clear about this: Musk has no statistical grounds to state categorically that autonomous systems are safer than human-driven vehicles. That conclusion might stand to reason, since human error is blamed for most vehicular deaths and injuries, but autonomous systems might create dangerous situations we can't yet anticipate. His apparent assumption that the debate is over -- "Vehicles that we're producing are capable of full autonomy," he said -- is a little scary, considering how much still needs to be learned about the functioning of fully autonomous cars, and about the interaction of autonomous systems with humans in the cockpit.

Cisco plans to acquire Accompany, a privately held company that provides AI tools for sales, for $270 million. And Cisco named Accompany CEO Amy Chang as senior vice president in charge of Cisco's collaboration technology group. Chang replaces Rowan Trollope, who is leaving effective Thursday to take a job as CEO of another company, Cisco Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: CSCO) said in a statement. Trollope joins Five9, a cloud contact center software vendor. Accompany provides a platform for finding new prospects, navigating sales and strengthening relationships, Cisco says.