Every morning, without fail, I ask my closest smart speaker to play NPR. Clearly, there's much more that a web-connected, voice-controlled speaker could do. And it seems Google has the same idea: the company announced today that it's developing an open audio news standard for the Assistant. When you ask your Google Home (or any other Assistant-powered device) to play the news, it'll automatically generate a playlist of stories based on your interests using the same technology behind the AI on Google News. Hopefully, that should be more useful than just jumping into whatever your favorite station is playing at that moment.

AWS is not content to cede any part of any market to any company. When it comes to machine learning chips, names like Nvidia or Google come to mind, but today at AWS re:Invent in Las Vegas, the company announced a new dedicated machine learning chip of its own called Inferentia. "Inferentia will be a very high-throughput, low-latency, sustained-performance very cost-effective processor," AWS CEO Andy Jassy explained during the announcement. Holger Mueller, an analyst with Constellation Research, says that while Amazon is far behind, this is a good step for them as companies try to differentiate their machine learning approaches in the future. "The speed and cost of running machine learning operations -- ideally in deep learning -- are a competitive differentiator for enterprises. Speed advantages will make or break success of enterprises (and nations when you think of warfare). That speed can only be achieved with custom hardware, and Inferentia is AWS's first step to get in to this game," Mueller told TechCrunch.

In a week of multiple nine-figure venture capital funding rounds, B2B FinTech has proved it plans to end the year on a high note. The star of this week's roundup is undoubtedly data: Two Robotics Process Automation (RPA) companies focusing on enterprise data analytics and automation landed a combined $565 million, while other high-value rounds were closed in the workspace sharing and asset-based lending markets. Below, PYMNTS breaks down the more than $912 million raised by B2B FinTech firms this week. RPA is igniting chatter in the corporate finance community as professionals explore next-level analytics and automation functionality to enhance processes like accounts payable, accounts receivable, cash flow management and more. This week, RPA startup Automation Anywhere made waves with its $300 million investment from the SoftBank Vision Fund, reports said Thursday (Nov.

In news that might help you make some sense of your fragmented, frustrating device set up, Amazon announced today that its Echo devices will support Apple Music starting December 17. It's a small breakthrough in the streaming wars, one that should help bring some sense to your streaming strategy. And you've got Apple's increasing need to branch out beyond hardware to thank. When the Apple Music Alexa skill goes into effect next month, all you'll need to do to tap into Beats 1 is enable it and link your account. The simplicity of switching it on belies the tangled threads that will have gotten it there in the first place.

General Motors announced plans to close three assembly plants, one each in Michigan, Ohio and Ontario before the end of 2019. Cruise Automation's Dan Kan and Kyle Vogt pose for a photo with General Motors' Dan Ammann at Cruise Automation offices in San Francisco, Calif. on Nov. 20, 2018. General Motors is moving its No. 2 executive, company President Dan Ammann, to be CEO of its self-driving unit, GM Cruise, as it aggressively pushes to bring the robot cars to market next year. Starting Jan. 1, Ammann, 46, takes the helm of Cruise. Cruise cofounder, Kyle Vogt, 33, stays to lead technology development as Cruise president and chief technology officer.

Toyota just brought your dreams of an Avatar-like proxy one step closer to reality. Teaming with NTT Docomo, it remotely controlled its T-HR3 humanoid robot over a 5G network from a distance of 10 kilometers (6.2 miles). So far the bot, first unveiled a year ago, has only been controlled over a direct wired connection. "This time, with an eye toward improved use in practical environments, the T-HR3 was successfully controlled wirelessly," Toyota said in a press release. The T-HR3, Toyota's third-generation humanoid robot, was designed from the get-go to be remote-controlled by a human. The operators strap themselves into a base with wearable hand, arm and foot controls, along with a head-mounted display that lets them view the world from the robot's perspective.

Medtronic has announced that it will acquire long-time partner Nutrino, an AI powered personalized nutrition platform for an undisclosed sum. As part of the deal Medtronic will be integrating Nutrino's AI-driven personalized insights and food database. The acquisition is set to specifically boost Medtronic's offerings for people living with diabetes and offer the company's predictive glycemic response algorithm, which will be integrated with Medtronic's CGM system. "Bringing Nutrino and their nutrition-related expertise into our organization will give us a substantial differentiator in the diabetes industry and accelerate our progress to help people with diabetes live with greater freedom and better health," Hooman Hakami, executive vice president and president of the Diabetes Group at Medtronic, said in a statement. "The Nutrino team has been an outstanding partner over the past few years. We are excited to welcome them to our team, and I have no doubt that, together, we will make a profound impact on the lives of people with diabetes."

The joint partnership announces a secure, cloud-managed gateway solution ready for deployment in critical infrastructures, such as power substations, manufacturing, transportation, intelligent buildings, and smart cities. MISSISSAUGA, ONT. Lanner Electronics, Inc., a global leader in design and manufacturing of network appliances and industrial IoT gateways, will be demonstrating a joint solution with Zededa at the IoT Tech Expo in Santa Clara, Nov. 28-29, 2018. Zededa has developed an innovative cloud-managed software solution which provisions, administers and secures IIoT infrastructures. The joint solution of Lanner's validated white-box gateway integrated with the Zededa real-time software is developed to enable interoperability and connectivity on both hardware and software levels in industrial automation, energy and retail applications. Since 2013, Lanner has introduced a series of industrial gateway products designed for key applications, such as cyber security, edge computing, wireless connectivity and SD-WAN.

Our customers are living in a data-driven world and the volume of information they generate is growing exponentially. As a result, companies are increasingly investing in the hardware, software, and services needed to gain actionable insights from their data. By 2022, the total addressable market for artificial intelligence/machine learning (AI/ML) and big data is expected to grow to approximately $160 billion.[1] However, according to Gartner, by 2020 half of organizations will lack sufficient AI and data literacy skills needed to extract business value from their data, and they are already demanding easier-to-implement, faster-to-deploy, and more cost-effective solutions for AI/ML and big data analytics.[2] Today, HPE announced that we are acquiring BlueData, a leading provider of AI/ML and big data analytics infrastructure software, which will significantly expand our footprint in the rapidly growing artificial intelligence and big data analytics space.

Amazon announced today that it's making its range of machine learning courses available to all developers signed up to its AWS platform for free. This program was previously available only to Amazon employees, but anyone can now take advantage of it at no charge by signing up to Amazon Web Services' free plan. It includes 30 courses in total, with over 45 hours of course material, videos, and lab tests. The company says its content addresses beginners, advanced developers, and everyone in between. The company is targeting four groups with this program: developers, data scientists, data platform engineers, and business professionals.