The fashion technology outfit co-founded by José Neves plans to use AI to improve made-to-order fashion supply chain. PlatformE, a fashion technology group co-founded by Farfetch's José Neves, is buying start-up Cambridge-based Catalyst AI for an undisclosed sum. According to the announcement, the deal will bring Catalyst AI's machine learning tools for optimizing fashion supply chains to PlatformE's services, which focus on on-demand and made-to-order fashion. "We're delighted to strengthen our capabilities with Catalyst AI's innovative intellectual property, and will benefit immensely from the team's expertise and their network of talent in one of the world's leading data science ecosystems," PlatformE co-founder and chief executive officer Gonçalo Cruz said in a statement. For Catalyst AI co-founder and CEO Raymond Siems, "Gonçalo has an unwavering vision for the future of fashion."

A young company focused on artificial intelligence is putting its roots down in McKinney.

Hanover, Germany – Continental has acquired a minority stake in Recogni, a German-US start-up working on a new chip architecture for AI-based object-recognition in real time. The San Jose, California-based tech firm's chips are intended for use in Continental's vehicle computers, for example to perform rapid processing of sensor data for automated and autonomous driving. As an investor – percentage stake not disclosed – the Hanover-based group is contributing financial support and expertise in the field of AI, vehicle sensors and advanced driver assistance systems to Recogn's chip design work. Continental said volume production featuring the new chip application could begin as early as 2026: the new processors serving as "ultra-economical data boosters: with minimal energy consumption." The development, it added, will enable vehicle computers to gain a rapid sense of the vehicle's immediate surroundings, thus creating the basis for automated and autonomous driving.

In production, waste comes in many shapes and sizes. For some businesses, it could be'reject' products that don't fit the desired weight, size, or shape. For others, it could be a question of quality – such as colour or moisture variances – or raw materials variability. Whatever the form of the waste, production losses are'very important challenges to deal with', according to Seebo co-founder and CEO Lior Akavia. The start-up was born out of a desire to cut waste in production lines, both in prediction and prevention.

Frederick Mutual Insurance Company has signed a commercial agreement with Betterview – a start-up that develops solutions for the property insurance market – to leverage the latter's AI-powered property risk management platform. Terms of the agreement were not disclosed. Through the agreement, Frederick Mutual will utilize Betterview's property analytics to enhance the lifecycle of its policies – from loss control and underwriting to claims and catastrophe response. Betterview's platform is used by personal lines and commercial lines carriers to identify and score roofing conditions, as well as other related property risks. The start-up makes this possible through the use of machine learning and computer vision to analyze aircraft and satellite imagery.

QBE Insurance Group's streak of investing in technology start-ups continues. Through its investment arm QBE Ventures, the company recently partnered with HyperScience, a machine-learning company putting artificial intelligence to work. The start-up automates office work and will allow QBE to glean useful data from thousands of documents that often just get filed away in a box or the cloud, never to see the light of day again. "HyperScience, to us, was a really obvious choice and an obvious partner because of the problem they were solving and the way that they were doing it," said Ted Stuckey, head of QBE's Global Innovation Lab. "If you look across the normal operations of your standard property and casualty insurer, so much of what we do is back-office processing of information. Just the volume of the documents that we deal with, the volume of human-readable content that is touched by so many different people across the organization, automating that [by] using artificial intelligence to influence and add efficiency to that process was not only a huge operational efficiency game, but an obvious partnership."

China's Baidu Inc. has partnered with a Guangdong-based furniture maker and an artificial intelligence start-up to launch an artificial intelligence-based home package retailer and the team kicked off operations with the opening of eight experience-based smart home stores. Yihua Lifestyle Technology Co., which makes flooring and furniture, and Beijing-based Xiaocong Smart Technology Co., which creates smart appliances, joined Baidu to open the Yihua retail centers in Beijing, Shanghai, and Zhengzhou in Henan province, reported tech news website DoNews. The parties plan to cooperate further to open 18 similar experience halls nationwide this year and in the future, create 300 outlets that combine real estate, elderly care, and community lifestyle stores to install smart home solutions in over 30,000 apartments. Under the deal, Baidu provides its DuerOS digital assistant as the control center for the smart home, while Xiaocong brings in connected home equipment such as lighting, sockets, curtains and door locks. Yihua provides the display venues.

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Gigaom, the leader in emerging technology research, today announced that it is holding its first annual competition for the AI start-up that delivers the highest ROI to corporate customers. The GAIN competition coincides with the annual conference Gigaom AI Now held in San Francisco, CA, February 15-16th 2017. AI startups are leading the way for bringing positive impacts of AI to many of the world's long-term challenges. "Record number of investments are being made in early stage AI start-ups. The competition will identify which new ventures can deliver the highest ROI to businesses today," explained David Hehman, Gigaom's Start-up & VC editor.

Gigaom will be holding our first annual competition for the AI start-up that delivers the highest ROI to corporate customers. The GAIN competition coincides with the annual conference Gigaom AI Now held in San Francisco, CA, February 15-16th 2017. AI startups are leading the way for bringing positive impacts of AI to many of the world's long-term challenges. "Record number of investments are being made in early stage AI start-ups. The competition will identify which new ventures can deliver the highest ROI to businesses today," explained David Hehman, Gigaom's Start-up & VC editor.