A billionaire relative of California Gov. Gavin Newsom's wife is hosting a major fundraiser for former President Trump in California on Friday, according to reports. Tom and Stacey Siebel are hosting a fundraiser in the Bay Area community of Woodside for Trump on Friday afternoon. Tom Siebel, a billionaire software developer and CEO of his own enterprise AI software company, C3.ai, is a second cousin once removed of Jennifer Siebel Newsom, the wife of Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, the Los Angeles Times reported. Tom Siebel has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to Trump's 2024 campaign and PACs supporting the Republican nominee, according to the Times and the San Francisco Gate. Newsom has been a vocal critic of Trump and was a surrogate for President Biden's now-defunct re-election campaign.

Artificial intelligence is the latest tech flavor of the month. Industry giants Google, Microsoft and China's Baidu have all had big AI announcements in recent days, as ChatGPT bot mania is taking the corporate world by storm. All of this AI news has helped boost shares of Baidu (BIDU), Microsoft (MSFT) and Google owner Alphabet (GOOGL) this year. However, Alphabet (GOOGL) tumbled Wednesday following a rocky demo of Bard, its rival to ChatGPT. Traders have also been bidding up the stocks of much smaller, unprofitable companies that are trying to make a name for themselves in the AI arms race.

The wide scale adoption of Artificial Intelligence (AI) software is one of the great transformational technologies of the 21st Century. It is also big business. The global market for AI was estimated at $387.45 billion in 2022 and is expected to reach $1.394 trillion by 2029, according to Fortune Business Insight. One company that is helping to accelerate that transformation, is AI pioneer C3 AI (NYSE: AI). Founded in 2009 long before the wide adoption of either the Cloud or AI by legendary Silicon Valley entrepreneur and billionaire Tom Siebel, C3 provides an open model-AI architecture that simplifies data science and application development to offer an end-to-end platform for developing, deploying, and operating large-scale AI applications; a portfolio of industry-specific SaaS AI applications; a suite of industry-specific CRM applications; and a no-code AI solution to apply data science to everyday business problems.

C3 AI "…could become the de facto AI platform standard for the world's most complex industries" "Ahead of its time, C3 AI's strategy is to make AI application-centric by building a growing library of industry solutions, forging deep industry partnerships, running in every cloud, and facilitating extreme reuse through common data models," the report states. "We are pleased to be recognized as a leader in AI and ML platforms," said Thomas Siebel, C3 AI CEO. "I'm delighted to see C3 AI's significant investments in enterprise AI software be acknowledged. I believe that Forrester Research has made an important contribution, having published the first professional comprehensive analysis of enterprise AI and Machine Learning platforms," Siebel continued, "changing the dialogue from a focus on disjointed tools to the importance of cohesive enterprise AI platforms. This is certain to accelerate the market adoption of enterprise AI and simplify often protracted decision processes."

I had a couple questions I had wanted to ask Tom Siebel ever since his company, C3.ai (ticker "AI") went public in December of 2020. When I finally get my chance, I have to wait a moment, because Siebel is irrepressible. He often has the advantage on a reporter, leading with a kind of gusto that eclipses the standard question and answer protocol. "I had an epiphany this week," Siebel tells me, over a Greek coffee at a Greek joint in midtown Manhattan, Friday afternoon. Siebel, in the course of meeting with investors in New York and Boston this week, including Fidelity, has had reason to crystallize his thoughts about what artificial intelligence means, at least for his company and his customers. It is a good time to go on the road. At a recent stock price of $24.24, C3.ai shares are down sixty-five percent in the past year, twenty-two percent this year, and seventy-four percent since the IPO. And the entire software market is somewhat in the toilet as valuations are revised across the board.

C3 AI, the Enterprise AI application software company, announced that Forrester Research has named it a Leader in AI and Machine Learning Platforms in its July 2022 report, The Forrester Wave: AI/ML Platforms, Q3 2022. "We are pleased to be recognized as a leader in AI and ML platforms" "Ahead of its time, C3 AI's strategy is to make AI application-centric by building a growing library of industry solutions, forging deep industry partnerships, running in every cloud, and facilitating extreme reuse through common data models," the report states. "We are pleased to be recognized as a leader in AI and ML platforms," said Thomas Siebel, C3 AI CEO. "I'm delighted to see C3 AI's significant investments in enterprise AI software be acknowledged. I believe that Forrester Research has made an important contribution, having published the first professional comprehensive analysis of enterprise AI and Machine Learning platforms," Siebel continued, "changing the dialogue from a focus on disjointed tools to the importance of cohesive enterprise AI platforms. This is certain to accelerate the market adoption of enterprise AI and simplify often protracted decision processes."

Did you miss a session at the Data Summit? Today, C3 AI's CEO Thomas Siebel announced the third group of Digital Transformation Institute (DTI) grant recipients to accelerate the development of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) technologies in hopes to combat emerging threats. As an organization, C3 AI provides enterprises with an AI Application platform they can use to create, deploy, and manage AI applications for use cases like fraud detection, network health, supply network optimization, energy management, and more. The grant was established in March 2020 by C3 AI, Microsoft, and some of the world's leading universities. The goal is to engage the world's top scientists through cash grants to encourage them to conduct research and train practitioners on AI, machine learning, Cloud computing, IoT, big data analytics, organizational behavior, public policy, and ethics.

C3.ai's (NYSE:AI) stock tumbled 10% on Sept. 2 after the artificial intelligence software provider posted its first-quarter earnings. Its revenue rose 29% year-over-year to $52.4 million, beating estimates by $1.1 million. It posted a net loss of $37.5 million -- compared to a slim profit of $150,000 a year ago -- but its loss of $0.37 per share still matched Wall Street's expectations. Should investors buy C3 after its post-earnings plunge? Or is it still overvalued even after plummeting more than 70% from its 52-week high?

Technology industry veterans Tom Davenport and Tom Seibel have seen firsthand how data, analytics and artificial intelligence have changed business models over the past three decades. In a conversation with ThoughtSpot Chief Data Strategy Officer Cindi Howson at VentureBeat's Transform 2021 conference on Tuesday, Davenport and Siebel shared their insights into how technology has boosted innovation and how it can transform industries, as well as the dangers it presents. Davenport said the biggest change he's seen in his career has been the democratization of technology. "There's been a continual move toward the software being easier to use, and being able to do more things on its own -- automated analytics, automated data science, automated machine learning," Davenport said. "I think we're poised for even more democratization, which is great. I think overall there's some issues that it raises, but it really opens up this field to a lot more people who may not have been nerdy enough to study statistics and get into the details of how you create various models."

C3.ai, which is a top provider of enterprise AI software and services, is a newly public company. It pulled off its deal in December and issued 15.1 million shares at $42 each. And this would not be the end of the gains. Within a couple months, the stock price would hit an all-time high of $183. But as the markets started to cool off, so did the shares of C3.ai.