I have been interested in computers and their capability to solve problems since high school when I started writing software for electrophoresis analysis using the Apple II I had been using for gaming. I've been involved with digital pathology since finishing medical school. After growing a company focused on digitizing pathology slides, which was ultimately acquired by Carl Zeiss, the utilization and complete harvesting of the information contained in those images became a clear next step. I believe that Artificial Intelligence is the key to unlocking the potential of this vast trove of data contained in Pathology slides, PreciseDx, was borne out of this belief. AI is the cornerstone of our technology.

Xona Space Systems plans to provide centimeter-level positioning accuracy and will serve the emerging autonomous vehicle community, where precise navigation is key. Tyler Reid is co-founder and CTO of Xona Space Systems. Previously, Tyler worked as a Research Engineer at the Ford Motor Company in localization and mapping for self-driving cars. He has also worked as an engineer at Google and as a lecturer at Stanford University, where he co-taught the GPS course. Tyler received his PhD (2017) and MSc (2012) in Aeronautics and Astronautics from Stanford and B.Eng. ('10) in Mechanical Engineering from McGill.

The AI engine supports a self-operating building that requires no human intervention. What inspired you to launch BrainBox AI? My journey into HVAC technology began while working on energy efficiency projects throughout North America and Europe. During this stage of my life, I dealt with the technology in a plethora of buildings. These were buildings of different sizes and purpose, anything from hotels all the way to data centers. It quickly became apparent to me that continuous commissioning approaches would generate consistent energy savings but would require extensive amounts of both financial and human capital.

Don't miss the rest of the articles in our Cybersecurity Trends in 2020 series: To say that artificial intelligence (AI) has reached buzzword status may be an understatement. The general public largely misunderstands the term while the C-suite can't get enough of it. A layperson may consider AI a thing of the future, like flying cars and drone grocery delivery, but in reality most of today's business and commercial software contain AI and its little sister, machine learning (ML). And nearly any software developer will tell you--repeatedly--that these tools are little more than statistical probability. They analyze existing data, take action, and make predictions based on the data they have. Over the past several years, we've seen cybersecurity software vendors employ AI to identify security risks on software and networks.

There's more open source software headed for edge computing deployments. Swim, the four-year-old San Jose-based startup whose platform for real-time analytics at the edge has been running as a proprietary product licensed to specific customers, this week announced an open source version of the platform licensed under the Apache 2.0 license. The Open Source Edge Intelligence Platform, as the project is now called, is a Java Virtual Machine extension that's used in place of a traditional stack to analyse streaming data on the fly. The software works through mesh-connected "digital twins" that utilize machine learning to predict changes in the data being created. It's used by enterprises, equipment manufacturers, and Internet of Things businesses to locally process and analyze large amounts of streaming data.

Artificial intelligence, in its many forms, will likely continue to redefine how individuals think about government, school, work, and daily life. And startups that are not leveraging AI are beginning to fall behind the rest of the pack. "AI will be a true differentiator for companies in the future. The companies that have mastered it will take off, those who haven't will dwindle (just like companies choosing to embrace software and the internet early on)," Scott Stephenson, founder and CEO of Deepgram, an automatic speech recognition company, told Crunchbase News in an email. And in a world where supergiant rounds are now quite common, AI startups have brought in some significant capital.

Currently co-founder and CTO at Nudge.ai, which uses artificial intelligence to help salespeople find useful trigger events at their target accounts. Letting AI do the heavy burden of research allows sales professionals to focus on selling, while never missing a chance to turn latent demand into active demand. Prior to that, co-founder and CTO of Eloqua, a company I helped guide to a market-leading position in marketing automation, while growing it to a $100 million revenue run rate, through its IPO on the NASDAQ, and to ultimate acquisition by Oracle. Tell me about your early career. It may seem strange considering that Nudge.ai is not my first software startup, but I'm not even originally a software guy.

How many computers do you own? If you picked a number close to three (say, laptop, tablet, and smartphone) you're way off. The answer is probably dozens. There are computers in your car, in your appliances, in your thermostat, and maybe even in your light bulbs. Every year the number goes up.