Pienso, a machine learning platform for non-programmers, has closed a $2.1 million seed round. Led by Eniac Ventures, with participation from SoftTech VC, Indicator Ventures and E14 Fund, Pienso is focused on democratizing machine learning for domain experts who are non-programmers with no technical or data scientist experience. The funding allows the company to scale operations. "Investment by large enterprises in machine learning is rapidly accelerating as corporations spin up massive data lakes to garner insights into their business. However, it is costly, challenging to integrate and before now required data scientists on staff," said Vic Singh, Indian American general partner at Eniac.

With fintech startups threatening the traditional banking industry, some financial institutions are refusing to play the role of helpless victim by launching their own innovation hubs. However, most of these idea labs aren't found in the U.S. Rather than resign themselves to fate and surrender market share as they are increasingly marginalized by fintech startups, many of the world's leading banks are taking the lead with a proactive strategy: launching their own internal innovation labs. These aren't just hollow corporate initiatives designed to generate some PR buzz. And they go beyond the typical R&D department you might find tucked away in some corner office. They are bona fide programs, with their own slick facilities backed by a real investment -- both money and manpower.

The AI NexusLab is a four-month go-to-market accelerator run by the Future Labs at NYU to support AI companies going from MVP to product-market fit. This program is a joint initiative between the NYU Future Labs and ff Venture Capital (ffVC). Each cohort is limited to no more than seven companies. Unlike traditional accelerators, the AI NexusLab is for founders who need a catalyst, not a classroom. Each company is pushed toward market entry and expansion through pilots and customers.

Overview: An event series which helps startup, corporate, and tech investment professionals sift through the noise, and understand the true happenings in the Artifical Intelligence industry. Guests from various industries will use this new found Focus to learn how to prepare for, and even implement Artificial intelligence into their businesses. Matt Greenwood - Chief Innovation Officer at Two Sigma Investments: Two Sigma Ventures is a division of Two Sigma that seeks to invest in companies that push the boundaries of an industry and bring real progress to the world, by harnessing the power of data science, machine learning, distributed computing, artificial intelligence, advanced hardware, and related fields. Vincent Tang - Lead Machine Learning Engineer at Samsung Accelerator: The accelerator partners with innovators to build ideas into products, grow products into businesses, and scale businesses that leverage and transform the Samsung ecosystem.Started in 2013 on a mission to create breakout software and services and foster a startup culture at Samsung. Jake Soffer - Co-Founder & CEO at Rollio: Rollio is Artificial Intelligence (AI) built into your Sales Team's core.

Artificial intelligence, or A.I., has been around since the start of computing and has had many false starts. The reality did not live up to the expectations set by science fiction. Accordingly, for many years, the majority of people's understanding of A.I. was confined to university laboratories, corporate skunk works, research parks, and that movie with Haley Joel Osment and Jude Law. Attempts to introduce A.I. products and services into the marketplace and for the broader benefits of society were ill-fated. Computing power was insufficient, and the abundance of structured data -- let alone a knowledge of what to do with said data -- was not yet upon us.