It is driven by proprietary quantum machine learning algorithms and methodologies and provides technology services to address complex AI optimization problems. Based on the Quantum Intelligence as a Service (QIaaS) hybridized platform architecture, QIT supports quantum computers, classical computers, and digital quantum simulators on the hardware layer. Current providers include D-Wave, AWS and AliCloud, etc. With QIT in place, business users will be able to conduct R&D and effectively build applications online through QIaaS. Inside QIT, they can interact directly with API layers for authentication, modeling and prediction, and evoke machine learning algorithms from classical models and Qindom's QI-enhanced ones.

BERLIN--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct 30, 2018--omni:us, the only AI company of its kind fully focused on insurance, has today announced the closure of a Series A round, bringing its total funding to date to USD 22,5 million. The investment has been led by Berlin-headquartered VC firm Target Global, followed by MMC Ventures and Talis Capital. Existing investors, Unbound and Anthemis, also participated in the round, demonstrating their continued commitment to the company's ambitions. This funding reinforces omni:us' position as a market leader in enabling insurers to become more data-driven and adapt to today's customer expectations. As a key player in the major digital revolution currently taking place in the insurance industry, omni:us has developed cutting-edge AI technology that empowers all kinds of organisations within the sector: many of the top global insurance companies - such as Allianz, Baloise and AmTrust – count on its deep digital transformation expertise in order to innovate and meet growing customer needs.

Compared to a few years ago, the 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. 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 2018 AI ecosystem report covers a wide range of companies in the growing AI space, drawing on Tractica's internal knowledge base of the competitive environment, as well as external sources. Tractica has identified and categorized a total of 1,000 AI companies and provided more in-depth profiles of 200 key industry players that our analysis has revealed to be the most notable and representative examples of AI technology providers, solution providers, platforms, service providers, hardware vendors, and other players who each in their own way are helping to propel the sector forward. These companies span the globe and cover a spectrum of technologies and end-market segments.

Google has rolled out updates to its Analytics platform designed to help marketers better understand and identify their core audiences. Included in these updates is Google Analytics Intelligence, a machine learning algorithm that predicts website traffic patterns and behaviors. When patterns fall outside of what Analytics Intelligence predicts, the tool triggers an alert. This feature is a step away from passive reporting and a step in the right direction towards meaningful analysis. The most significant update, however, is the new Google InMarket Leads tool, powered by Fastbase.

One of the biggest hurdles in the field of artificial intelligence is preventing it from developing the same intrinsic faults and biases as its human creators, and in using AI to solve social issues instead of simply automating tasks. Now, Google, one of the world's leading organizations developing AI software today, is launching a global competition to help spur the development of applications and research that have positive impacts on the field and society at large. The competition, called the Google AI Impact Challenge, was announced today at an event called AI for Social Good held at the company's Sunnyvale, California office. Google is positioning it as a way to integrate nonprofits, universities, and other organizations not within the corporate and profit-driven world of Silicon Valley into the future-looking development of AI research and applications. The company says it will award up to $25 million to a number of grantees to "help transform the best ideas into action."

Stephen A. Schwarzman, chairman, CEO and co-founder of Blackstone Group LP, is making his mark on the future with a $350 million grant to MIT to study artificial intelligence. Mr. Schwarzman's gift is providing the seed funding for a $1 billion commitment by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology "to address the global opportunities and challenges presented by the prevalence of computing and the rise of artificial intelligence," according to an MIT news release. It is not the first time that Mr. Schwarzman's has given a gift to further the study of artificial intelligence. Earlier this year, he donated $5 million to the Harvard Business School for case studies and other programs exploring the implications of artificial intelligence on industries and business. At MIT, Mr. Schwarzman's foundational gift will help establish the MIT Stephen A. Schwarzman College of Computing, to be headquartered in a new building on MIT's campus in Cambridge, Mass.

WASHINGTON – Microsoft said Friday it is prepared to provide its technology to the U.S. military, including for a massive cloud computing project, despite ethics concerns among some of its employees and others in Silicon Valley. "All of us who live in this country depend on its strong defense," Microsoft president Brad Smith said in a blog post. The statement came two weeks after Google dropped out of the bidding for the huge Pentagon cloud computing contract that could be worth up to $10 billion. The company said the deal would be inconsistent with its principles, which left Amazon and Microsoft as the two leading contenders. Smith said Microsoft has been a long-standing supplier of technology for the U.S. military, and added that the company was aware of the potential ethical concerns about the use of artificial intelligence in warfare.

Global software provider Katabat has released Katabat Engage, which delivers data-driven debt collections powered by machine learning to consumer lenders. Katabat Engage helps lenders collect more dollars through a platform of personalized, digital communications tailored to customer preferences. Powered by a proprietary machine learning platform that has performed well in Google Kaggle competitions, Engage enables lenders to deploy customized e-mail and SMS text collection messages and continuously tune customer outreach and response strategies. "We are very excited to present Engage to our clients and the broader marketplace," said Katabat CEO Ray Peloso, who recently did an interview with Thrive Global about how machine learning can improve the customer journey. "Our data science team has built a mature and reliable data pipeline for machine learning and continues to demonstrate the power of the platform through its success in several Google Kaggle machine-learning competitions."

Elsevier, the global information analytics business specializing in science and health, is pleased to announce the winner of the 2018 Semantic Web Challenge (SWC). The winner was recently announced at the 17th International Semantic Web Conference held in Monterey County, California, USA. The challenge and allocated prize were sponsored by Elsevier. The Semantic Web Challenge is a highly-prestigious, and the longest-running, competition fostering scientific progress in the field of artificial intelligence on the web. The semantic web and the use of linked data extends the current human-readable web by encoding some of the semantics of resources in a machine-readable form.

BOSTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--DataRobot, the creator of the automated machine learning category, has raised $100 million in Series D funding, bringing its total funding to $225 million. The round was led by Meritech and Sapphire Ventures, with participation from DFJ Growth and 16 previous investors including NEA, IA Ventures, and Intel Capital. Meritech's Rob Ward and Sapphire's Jai Das have joined the Board of Directors. DataRobot was founded by experienced applied data scientists in 2012, long before the current resurgence of AI. Their mission was to develop technology to automate the process of building and operationalizing machine learning models.