Behavox is shaping the future for how businesses harness their most important raw material - data. Our mission is bold: Organize enterprise data into actionable information that protects and promotes the business growth of multinational companies around the world. From managing enterprise risk and compliance to maximizing revenue and value, our data operating platform presents a widespread opportunity to build multilingual, AI/ML-based solutions that activate data for every function within a global enterprise. Our approach is unique, and it's validated by our customers who tell us to keep forging ahead because no one else is aggregating, analyzing, and acting on data to uncover opportunities or solve problems quite the way we are. We are looking for fearless innovators who have an insatiable appetite for building what no one has built before.

Physicists may say otherwise, but it is trade that makes the world go round -- at least financially. From supply chain issues to volatility in prices across asset classes, from stocks to crude oil, trade defines much of the movement in the international economy. With trillions of dollars moving daily across the financial system, the temptation to indulge in surreptitious behaviour is great. Regulators, compliance officers and banking leaders have long sought effective tools to combat the increasing sophistication of bad actors, whose wrongdoing frequently leads to billions of dollars in financial losses. Compliance officers and regulators are looking to identify criminal actions such as insider trading, market manipulation, money laundering, violations of sanctions/export controls and trading in others' accounts more accurately and quickly.

NEW YORK – SoftBank Group Corp.'s Vision Fund 2 is investing $100 million in compliance and employee-monitoring software company Behavox, according to people familiar with the matter. The investment, which is in the form of preferred shares, values Behavox at about $500 million, the people said, asking not to be identified because the information is private. The investment group will also be represented on the company's board, the people added. The deal is among the first for the second incarnation of SoftBank's $100 billion Vision Fund. It comes at a time when the Japanese company faces growing scrutiny from investors including activist Elliott Management Corp. amid high-profile setbacks such as WeWork and Uber Technologies Inc. Behavox uses machine learning and advanced analytics software to help alert companies to potential wrongdoing among employees.

Fascination with AI shows no sign of abating in Europe. While established companies may still be slow to pick the technology up, new start-ups in the sector continue to grow – in France by as much as 38% this year already. There is also no shortage of investment, with $4bn pumped into the sector globally in Q3 compared to $2.8bn in the same period last year, while the UK continues to set the research and development standard in Europe with 623 AI-related patents. It's often said numbers like this are not intended to discourage entrepreneurs, but to motivate them to work smarter and harder. Unfortunately, it's more than just hard work that sets a company up for success – and for those who are looking to scale up their AI venture, the best lessons to be learned can be drawn from those who've been in the same position – and thrived.

You're young and want to get ahead. You work weekends and message colleagues with inspired trading ideas at all hours. You've just marked yourself as a potential rogue trader. Welcome to the brave new world of trader surveillance, where former Goldman Sachs research analyst Erkin Adylov is building a library of banking villainy based on the behaviors of hundreds of past miscreants such as UBS Group's Tom Hayes and Societe Generale's Jerome Kerviel. Using thousands of inputs, from stress levels in voice recordings to the frequency of visits to the staff canteen, Adylov and his team at startup Behavox grade employees on how likely they are to go bad before they do anything wrong. While that may sound like something out of a Philip K. Dick science-fiction novel, hedge fund Marshall Wace and interdealer broker TP ICAP are already using the software to monitor employees, and some of the biggest investment banks and commodities dealers in the world have begun testing it.

The UK fintech market is experiencing a new wave of innovation. Developments in artificial intelligence and machine learning are giving rise to a new generation of fintech startups. Prop trading houses and hedge funds have been using machine learning techniques for years to beat financial markets. It's interesting to see A.I. making its way into mainstream fintech. Companies are leveraging the technology to make sense of large volumes of data, making financial products and services more accessible for the end user.