When we think about artificial intelligence (AI), humans are rarely what springs to mind. And understandably so, as AI is all about machine intelligence and automation. AI has become an essential business tool, so we often commend the pioneering work of AI companies to support businesses as they digitally evolve. To shed a light on the importance of people in the creation of intelligent machines, we take a look at the best-in-class executives in the AI field who continue to push the technology – and its boundaries – forward. With a passion for AI, Andrej Karpathy is interested in training deep neural nets on large datasets.

London-based Vault Platform has reportedly secured USD 8.2 million in a Series A funding round led by Google's artificial intelligence-focused Gradient Ventures. The funding round also saw participation from Illuminate Financial as well as existing investors such as Kindred Capital and Angular Ventures. For those unaware, Vault specializes in providing a suite of SaaS tools to enterprises to help them manage workplace misconduct, internal ethics, and other integrity issues. It essentially decodes the reporting process and narrows it down to an individual level if reported by more than one employee. This encourages the employees who are hesitant to report any wrongdoings to voice their concerns directly to the top officials while maintaining their anonymity.

Oura, a Finnish startup that creates a smart activity- and sleep-tracking ring, has raised $28 million in a series B round of funding from Google's Gradient Ventures, Jack Dorsey's Square, and Forerunner Ventures. Founded out of Oulu, Finland, in 2013 Oura monitors the user's pulse, movement, and temperature to deliver a "holistic picture" of their health. And unlike many other health-trackers on the market, the Oura is not worn on a person's wrist -- it slides firmly onto their finger instead. The titanium ring features infrared LEDs, NTC temperature sensors, an accelerometer, and a gyroscope, and can last up to one week on a single charge. Each day, the user can view their data inside the Oura mobile app, with three scores allocated based on their sleep and activity.

Seed Round Co-Led by Glasswing Ventures and Google's AI-focused Fund, Gradient Ventures, Will Be Used To Supercharge R&D and Support Customer Success Plannuh, a startup transforming the way marketers plan and budget, announced a $4 million seed round co-led by Glasswing Ventures and Gradient Ventures, Google's AI-focused venture fund. The new funding will be used to accelerate Plannuh's R&D initiatives and support teams as the company continues to expand its customer base. Peter Mahoney, founder and CEO of Plannuh, was troubled by the consistent mismanagement of budgets and poor execution of plans resulting in wasted spend. Leveraging over 30 years of marketing experience, Mahoney identified that the primary causes of budgetary waste stemmed from too many marketing plans, budgets and metrics spread across various slide presentations, spreadsheets, documents, and disparate systems. This resulted in a lack of visibility into plan execution, time and marketing spend, as well as budget forecast accuracy.

The growing demand for ML/AI technologies, as well as for ML/AI talent, in the pharmaceutical industry is driving the formation of a new interdisciplinary field: data-driven drug discovery/healthcare. Consequently, there is a growing number of AI driven startups offering technology solutions for drug discovery/development. In drug development, preclinical phase (in vitro and in vivo), also named preclinical studies and nonclinical studies, is a stage of research that begins before clinical trials, and during which important feasibility, iterative testing and drug safety data are collected. According to a detailed mind-map prepared by Pharma Division of Deep Knowledge Analytics (updated Q1 2019): the AI for Drug Discovery, Biomarker Development and Advanced R&D Industry Landscape counts so far 400 investors, 170 companies and 50 corporations. This article focuses only on the AI startups and the AI investors trying to overcome the above 4 challenges during design and execution of the preclinical phase.

These and many other fascinating insights are from CB Insight's report, Google Strategy Teardown (PDF, 49 pp., opt-in). The report explores how Alphabet, Google's parent company is relying on Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning to capture new streams of revenue in enterprise cloud computing and services. Also, the report looks at how Alphabet can combine search, AI, and machine learning to revolutionise logistics, healthcare, and transportation. It's a thorough teardown of Google's potential acquisitions, strategic investments, and partnerships needed to maintain search dominance while driving revenue from new markets. CB Insights found Google is experiencing rising TAC in their core ad and search businesses.

AI is big; it is what will drive autonomy in transport, industry and manufacturing, and the ability for autonomous operations to be able to streamline operations is a primary goal in the development of artificial intelligence technology. Provider of artificial intelligence predictive analytics solutions, Canada-based Canvass Analytics, has now successfully closed a $US5 million investment round that will enable the company to work further towards that goal. The investment round, which has been led by Google's AI venture fund Gradient Ventures and is their first investment outside of the US, and who are joined in the round by Bedrock Industries, Viaduct Ventures and existing investors Real Ventures and Barney Pell, brings Canvass Analytics total investment to a cool $US7.5 million. Ankit Jain, a founding partner at Gradient Ventures says that "Autonomous operation is the holy grail of manufacturing and AI is the game-changer that is making it a reality across the industrial landscape." The company is already known for its success in providing AI tech to industrial IoT applications, improving margins and reducing costs across automotive, food and agriculture, energy and mining industries.

Google has launched Gradient Ventures, a new venture fund with technical mentorship for early-stage startups focused on artificial intelligence. Through Gradient, Google will provide portfolio companies with capital, resources, and dedicated access to experts and bootcamps in AI. And, Google will take a minority stake in the startups . The goal of the Gradient Ventures is to help their portfolio companies overcome engineering challenges to create products that will apply artificial intelligence to today's challenges and those we'll face in the future. Their portfolio is already growing, and their first companies are making progress, including Algorithmia, a marketplace for algorithms and functions, and Cogniac, a suite of tools used to create and manage visual models.

A new week brings a fresh Google initiative targeting AI startups. We started the month with the announcement of Gradient Ventures, Google's on-balance sheet AI investment vehicle. Two days later we watched the finalists of Google Cloud's machine learning competition pitch to a panel of top AI investors. And today, Google's Launchpad is announcing a new hands-on Studio program to feed hungry AI startups the resources they need to get off the ground and scale. The thesis is simple -- not all startups are created the same.

A new week brings a fresh Google initiative targeting AI startups. We started the month with the announcement of Gradient Ventures, Google's on-balance sheet AI investment vehicle. Two days later we watched the finalists of Google Cloud's machine learning competition pitch to a panel of top AI investors. And today, Google's Launchpad is announcing a new hands-on Studio program to feed hungry AI startups the resources they need to get off the ground and scale. The thesis is simple -- not all startups are created the same.