Vast Data will triple engineering investment and promises "very ambitious products" as the company orients towards a future in which machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) will dominate IT and investment around it. That's according to chief marketing officer Jeff Denworth, who spoke to Computer Weekly this week. He set out a vision of Vast as a rapidly rising star with a product that fits a future of very large volumes of data – generated from machine and human activity – from which organisations will want to quickly gain insight. Vast Data sells what it calls Universal Storage, based on bulk, relatively cheap and rapidly accessible QLC flash with Optane (or near-equivalent) fast cache to smooth input/output. It is file storage, mostly suited to unstructured or semi-structured data, and Vast envisages it as large pools of datacentre storage, an alternative to the cloud. Despite the tie to specific hardware, Vast sells only software – it's based on a containerised control plane – and with customers able to monitor and control fleets of Vast deployments anywhere across the globe via Uplink Cloud Management.

The big data market is in a state of upheaval as companies begin shifting their data strategies from "nothing" or "everything" in the cloud to a strategic mix, squeezing out middle-market players and changing what gets shared, how that data is used, and how best to secure it. This has broad implications for the whole semiconductor supply chain, because in many cases it paves the way for more data to move freely between different vendors, no matter where they sit in that chain. That can go a long way toward improving the quality of chips and systems, reducing the cost of design and manufacturing, and shed light on supply chain constraints. It also opens up many more opportunities for data analysis to help offset rising concerns about liability in markets such as automotive, medical and mil/aero. "For years, the Fortune 500 to the Global 5,000 were reticent about moving to the cloud, but all of a sudden in the last 12 to 18 months there has been a massive shift to the cloud," said Michael Schuldenfrei, corporate technology fellow at Optimal Plus.

We are at the dawn of the AI-first age of computing, says Google's Simon Balfe. Simon Balfe is agency development manager at Google Marketing Solutions in Dublin. We caught up with him at the recent Virgin Media Digital Evolution conference at the Titanic Belfast centre. "Mobile has become more important based on searches and we can now see, based on the data that we have, that machine learning is the next big shift, and we are trying to get that message across to people and help them along," he said.

Google's Simon Balfe says we are now in a mobile-only world and at the dawn of the AI-first age of computing. Simon Balfe is agency development manager at Google Marketing Solutions in Dublin. We caught up with him at the recent Virgin Media Digital Evolution conference at the Titanic Belfast centre. 'There is that kind of fear factor initially; they think it's a massive problem that is only for really large organisations' – SIMON BALFE Summing up the digital age we are in, Balfe revealed that seven times more data is created daily today than in 2010. "More people are searching on Google via mobile than desktop." He said that this is leading to a corresponding revolution in people expecting services immediately for instant gratification.

Future Decoded is a conference for customers and partners of the tech giant which was held in London over two days at the start of this month. Discussions about the potential of artificial intelligence (AI) were much in evidence. Microsoft's approach to AI is as a service delivered from its Azure cloud delivered through a network of large scale data centres and smaller edge based technologies. Also on the agenda was Microsoft's Quantum Computing software programme development which uses what is known as Topological Qubits code, described as "a robust type of quantum bit that Microsoft believes will serve as the basis for a scalable, general purpose quantum computer system." Microsoft plans to release Quantum Computing developer code before then end of the year.

IBM's California research lab sits atop a green hill here, 15 miles south of downtown San Jose. There aren't any signs that suggest if you drive up the narrow road that wraps around the hill you'll find a research facility at the top. No signs that the research center is home to a Fortune 500 company. No signs -- even inside -- that the company once dominated the personal computer industry.

Several companies are already working on flying car prototypes. NEW YORK -- While most of the auto industry is focused on getting self-driving cars rolling, Uber already has its eyes set to the skies. In a white paper published this week, the company detailed plans for Uber Elevate, its new division for offering rides through flying cars. The company hopes to have the program up and running within a decade. In addition to being incredibly cool, Uber stresses the many benefits of this method of transportation in this new mode of transportation, time saving being the biggest.

Every big company in Silicon Valley is chasing artificial intelligence, the increasingly powerful computer software that can learn from big sets of data almost like a human does. And Apple just hired one of the big guns of AI research, as the company continues to try to prove that it is not falling behind Google and its other rivals in the hot field. Ruslan Salakhutdinov announced on Twitter on Monday that he's joining Apple as a director of AI research. Salakhutdinov will continue to do work at Carnegie Mellon University, where he advises and does research on deep learning, a key AI technique. His hiring raises the question of whether Apple's growing AI team will take a more academic approach to AI research going forward.

Anti-money laundering, fraud prevention and sanctions processing are three of the key areas people working in in the payments industry see potential for artificial intelligence (AI) to play a role. In a survey of senior payment professionals in banks and corporates, 63% of those polled identified these three areas as potentially benefiting from AI that can learn from previous experience and behaviour patterns. That's according to Pelican, a company that – it should be noted - helps financial institutions apply application technologies to transactions. Formerly known as ACE software solutions, Pelican says it combines tools such as natural language processing and machine learning to profile payments and apply human-like logic to transactions. Pelican CEO Parth Desai says it's time the industry "wakes up" to the need to replace manual processes and legacy systems for payments processing. He says the gradual appearance of AI into everyday life will raise consumer expectations of faster results and services in their banking products too.

Visit Singularity Hub for the latest from the frontiers of manufacturing and technology as we bring you coverage of Singularity University's Exponential Manufacturing conference . Who will rule the future economy--entrepreneurs or mega corporations? Will the economy fracture into smaller and smaller bits or centralize in a winner-take-all scenario? The answer, according to John Hagel, is it depends where you look. Hagel is co-chairman of Deloitte's Center for the Edge.