ThoughtWire, developers of the award-winning Ambiant IIoT platform, today announced the closing of a combined $20 million debt and Series A financing. ThoughtWire will use the financing to further the company's geographic growth using Ambiant to make cities smarter, buildings more automated and energy efficient, and hospitals and workplaces safer, by interconnecting and orchestrating people, workflows, data and things in real-time. The investment round includes a respected syndicate of new and current investors including Yaletown Partners, BDC Capital, Round13 Capital, Epic Capital and Comerica. "We are proud to have new partners who are invested in our vision and mission to orchestrate a healthier, safer and cleaner world, and the enormous market opportunity that lies ahead for ThoughtWire," says Michael Monteith, CEO of ThoughtWire. "We're excited to have the opportunity to apply this latest investment to grow our team and expand the impact of our forward-thinking technology on Smart Cities and buildings, better healthcare and advanced manufacturing." Over the last two years, after attracting worldwide recognition from both Gartner and Frost & Sullivan for Ambiant's use in healthcare, the Ambiant IIoT platform is now being applied across diverse industries to deliver intelligent automation and provide real-time guidance to machines and staff to predict and resolve issues, ensure safety, and achieve energy efficiency.

Samsung Electronics has acquired a 100% stake in artificial intelligence (AI) startup Kngine, the company announced today. The San Francisco based startup specialises in an AI search engine that understands, answers questions and perform actions. This is the second AI startup acquisition by Samsung in the last four months. In late November 2017, the company had acquired Korean AI startup Fluenty, which also specialises in conversational AI. Set up in 2013 in Egypt, Kngine is an intelligent engine that can be used to automate customer service, power voice interfaces and drive enterprise search.

Tel Aviv-based Nucleai Ltd. announced on Monday it completed a $5 million Seed Round led by Vertex Ventures Israel and Grove Ventures Capital (GP) Ltd. Nucleai develops software that uses computer vision and machine learning algorithms to detect signs of cancer and gastrointestinal diseases. For daily updates, subscribe to our newsletter by clicking here. Today, most disease diagnoses are performed by pathologists by examining tissues and cells taken from the body during a biopsy to detect abnormalities. Nucleai's technology is designed to improve the efficiency of pathologists, reduce errors, and shorten patients' wait time for a diagnosis, the company said in a statement.

Last year the average American spent more than 290 hours behind the wheel of a car – that's roughly equivalent to seven 40-hour weeks – according to a report published by the AAA Foundation. When you expand that globally, the amount of time we spend driving is staggering. That's why automakers like Renault-Nissan, Volvo, BMW and Toyota are embracing the Internet of Things (IoT) to provide new ways to help drivers stay safe, connected and productive during their time on the road. By 2020, 90 percent of new cars will have connectivity capabilities1 and Microsoft is helping the automotive industry drive this transformation. Today at the Consumer Electronics show in Las Vegas, we announced the Microsoft Connected Vehicle Platform, an offering built on the powerful Microsoft Azure cloud. It brings Microsoft's intelligent services in virtual assistants, business applications, office services, visual analytics and productivity tools to the car, to reduce driver distractions and help drivers be even more mobile.

Samsung Electronics announced today that it will showcase three innovative new C-Lab (Creative Lab) projects based on artificial intelligence (AI) from March 11 through 14 at SXSW 2018 Trade Show. These projects – Toonsquare, Aurora, and GADGET – will introduce new user experiences with AI technologies to the attendees. The projects will be exhibited at Stand #1538 in Exhibit Hall 3 of the Austin Convention Center in Austin, Texas. Since its SXSW debut in 2015, C-Lab has introduced various projects in the field of music, art, and interactive technologies, to validating business opportunities and getting user feedback to refine the prototypes to reach market fit. "The majority of ideas that have been proposed recently aim to utilize artificial intelligence to solve inconveniences in daily life," said Jaiil Lee, Vice President and Head of the Creativity & Innovation Center at Samsung Electronics.

Remark Holdings, Inc. (MARK), a global technology company focused on artificial intelligence, and CP ALL Public Company Limited (CPALL.BK) today announced that they are partnering to deploy Remark's KanKan data intelligence and AI technologies in approximately 11,000 7-Eleven stores that CP ALL operates throughout Thailand. Remark and CP ALL will hold a press conference (the details of which appear below) on March 6, 2018, in Bangkok to launch the partnership. The Remark/CP ALL partnership will utilize KanKan's AI-based facial recognition and behavior analysis technologies to provide enhanced customer support, business analysis, employee management and security in CP ALL's 7-Eleven stores in Thailand, which generate more than $14 billion in revenue. KanKan's technologies can monitor product levels on store shelves, suggest products and services to customers, provide real-time operations performance and competitor analysis, check in and check out employees, identify unauthorized personnel, and assess crowd size and crowd flow for safety, among myriad other services. Approximately 10 million people pass through 7-Eleven stores in Thailand each day.

Loom Systems, the leading end-to-end AI-powered log analysis solution, announced the launch of its new 6-part Playbook, which provides organizations with a roadmap to easily introduce AI into existing IT infrastructure. "The biggest problem with new AI technology is failure to adopt and onboard it properly," said Gabby Menachem, CEO of Loom Systems. "With our new Playbook, we are rewriting the paradigm for adoption of AI technologies, creating a mental and organizational shift that allows companies to use and incorporate the technology efficiently and effectively." Loom Systems has been successful in developing a unique way of applying AI to organizational IT, reducing MTTRs by 45%, and decreasing alert fatigue by 90%, allowing the IT team to focus on higher-level IT problems. Loom Systems excels in bridging the gap between IT and business, using an all-inclusive approach comprised of three integrated components: Cutting edge AI technology Sophie, expert AI data analysts, and its new Playbook, which includes Loom's full implementation methodology.

Salesforce announced today that the company is now delivering more than 1 billion AI-driven predictions to its customers every day. Those predictions are powered by the company's Einstein-branded capabilities, which include sales and service forecasting. It's a major milestone for both Salesforce and Einstein, showing the potential of artificial intelligence's interaction with business users and the appetite for intelligent predictions based on business data. Salesforce launched the platform in the fall of 2016 with a great deal of fanfare from CEO Marc Benioff. Since then, the company has been building on its AI offerings.

Industry after industry is under siege as companies embrace digital transformation (DX) to disrupt existing business models and disintermediate their competitor's customer relationships. But what do we mean by "Digital Transformation"? Digital Transformation The coupling of granular, real-time data (e.g., smartphones, connected devices, smart appliances, wearables, mobile commerce, video surveillance) with modern technologies (e.g., cloud native apps, Big Data architectures, hyper-converged technologies, artificial intelligence, blockchain) to enhance products, processes, and business-decision making with customer, product and operational insights. The digital transformation starts by understanding the organization's business initiatives, and then prioritizing which initiatives are top candidates for enhancement through digital transformation. "Begin with an end in mind" to quote Stephen Covey.

Mice brains and machine learning may lead to a new way to treat depression, according to a new paper published in the journal Cell and co-authored by Infinia ML Chief Scientist Larry Carin, Ph.D. The paper describes how scientists measured electrical signals in the brains of both observably resilient, active mice and observably depressed, inactive mice. The complexity and scale of the available data, gathered from 18 regions of the brain, then required advanced machine learning for analysis. In effect, scientists trained a learning algorithm to map each brain's connections. They found a pattern in the resilient mice that differed from the depressed. "We wanted to understand the traffic flow of a healthy brain," said Carin, the project's machine learning lead.