Netail, a technology that enables retailers to auto-identify competitors across the internet and track their assortments, availability and optimize prices in real time, announced the closing of $5 Million in seed funding. The round was co-led by Magarac Venture Partners (MVP), which provides early-stage venture capital to dynamic entrepreneurs and successful technology companies throughout the Midwest, and Dr. Andrew Ng's AI Fund. Other investors include HKSTP Ventures. Consumer behavior has changed dramatically, and the majority of purchase decisions are now made online via search, marketplaces and social media. With retailers struggling to adapt, Netail's AI technology is designed to help them succeed by attracting, converting and retaining customers in these increasingly competitive digital arenas.

Learn more about what comes next. Palo Alto, California-based Landing AI, the AI startup led by Andrew Ng -- the cofounder of Google Brain, one of Google's AI research divisions -- today announced that it raised $57 million in a series A funding round led by McRock Capital. In addition, Insight Partners, Taiwania Capital, Canadian Pension Plan Investment Board, Intel Capital, Samsung Catalyst Fund, Far Eastern Group's DRIVE Catalyst, Walsin Lihwa, and AI Fund participated, bringing Landing AI's total raised to around $100 million. The increased use of AI in manufacturing is dovetailing with the broader corporate sector's embrace of digitization. According to Google Cloud, 76% of manufacturing companies turned to data and analytics, cloud, and AI technologies due to the pandemic.

WhyLabs, a machine learning startup that was spun out of the Allen Institute last year, helps data teams monitor the health of their AI models and the data pipelines that fuel them. Last year, the startup raised a $4 million seed round and today, the team announced that it has raised a $10 million Series A round co-led by Defy Partners and Andrew Ng's AI Fund. Existing investors Madrona Venture Group and Bezos Expeditions also participated in this round. Only a few years ago, "MLOps" wasn't really a thing, but it's now an established category and we're now seeing a growing number of startups and established players who are trying to get an early foothold in this market. "It's top of mind for everyone," WhyLabs CEO Alessya Visnjic said.

AI is making strides at many levels in the world of investment management. Investors may already be riding the wave of artificial intelligence, unaware of the many ways they've been integrated. There are three main levels where AI is making a mark, says Amit Gupta, a managing director in Accenture's capital market industry group. At the first level, firms are using AI in back-office administrative tasks like net asset value calculations, reconciliation, settlement operations. At the second level, they use it in front-office tasks like client targeting and management, profiling of clients, personalization of service.

AI investment funds are not all about mega-caps like Alphabet, but about companies in other sectors using AI to increase competition, finds Fiona Rintoul. If you were to ask artificial intelligence (AI) how to save the planet, it would probably tell you to kill all humans, because they cause the pollution that creates climate change. But that would not be the response you wanted; therefore, you must recalibrate. "We need to ask the right questions of AI," says Rani Piputri, head of automated intelligence investing at NN Investment Partners. "In this situation, AI will nudge people to have fewer children."

The LG Group said it will invest 20 billion won or $17 million in SoftBank's venture fund focused on artificial intelligence (AI) start-ups. Four affiliates of LG Group -- LG Electronics Inc, LG Chem Inc, LG Uplus Corp and LG CNS Co -- will jointly raise 20 billion won ($17 million) for Softbank Ventures' early-stage AI fund of 320 billion won, LG said. The investment in the Japanese tech giant's venture unit is part of the South Korean conglomerate's broader plan to develop advanced AI technologies that can be applied in a broad range of its products and services, Yonhap news agency reported. LG also unveiled a cloud-based AI platform for software developers to create synergy between its affiliates, vowing to expand collaborations with global IT giants, such as Amazon and Google. "We will pave the way for digital transformation through R&D and investment in AI technologies designed to break the existing framework and create more customer value," said Ahn Seung-kwon, the chief of LG Science Park.

The title of this article might sound farfetched to many readers, but keen students of artificial intelligence (AI) know that this is no longer very far away. Since the advent of computers, capital markets have always been at the forefront of technology. You may be wondering why these old 100-plus-year-old banking and financial institutions are doing with cutting edge technology. Think about this for a second: Venture capital companies (VCs) have been investing in all sorts of technologies. Waves of VCs from across the globe invest routinely in the next big things in technology.

What will happen when an AI will be entirely blamed for its actions? It brings up important points that we will all have to contend with soon! We'll have truly entered the age of AI when we can throw that AI in jail for bad behavior. My books on Amazon: The Little Book of Fundamental Indicators: Hands-On Market Analysis with Python: Find Your Market Bearings with Python, Jupyter Notebooks, and Freely Available Data: https://amzn.to/2DERG3d Create Income Streams with Online Classes: Design Classes That Generate Long-Term Revenue: https://amzn.to/2VToEHK The story itself is entertaining, and let me give you the 30 seconds low-down of what happened.

Title: Break Into AI: A Q&A with Andrew Ng on Building a Career in Machine Learning Speaker: Andrew Ng Date: 12/4/2018 Abstract Andrew Ng will share tips and tricks on how to break into AI. He will discuss some of the most valuable skills for today's machine learning engineers, how to gain the experience to successfully switch careers, and how to build a habit of lifelong learning. He will also take questions from aspiring engineers and business professionals who want to work on AI-powered products. SPEAKER Andrew Ng, General Partner, AI Fund; CEO, Landing AI; Adjunct Professor, Stanford University Dr. Andrew Ng, a globally recognized leader in AI, is a General Partner at AI Fund and CEO of Landing AI. As the former Chief Scientist at Baidu and the founding lead of Google Brain, he led the AI transformation of two of the world's leading technology companies.

Qualcomm Ventures, the corporate venture capital arm of the chipmaker, has plans to invest up to $100 million in artificial intelligence. Specifically, Qualcomm says it will provide capital to startups building on-device AI, which is AI that runs on the end device, like a smartphone or vehicle, rather than in the cloud. The fund's leader, Qualcomm investment director Albert Wang (pictured), says on-device AI is the future. "Today's AI processing is very computationally intensive," Wang told TechCrunch. "When you're talking to Alexa, nothing is processed on your device, it gets taken to the cloud and gets scrunched there. There are a few problems with that -- performance deteriorates, it consumes a lot of bandwidth and there are privacy issues. Imagine you have an Alexa that is more private and user-friendly, you ask the questions and can get the answers instantly. It doesn't take the round trip all the way to the cloud."