Siri made the iPhone more responsive with artificial intelligence, but now its founders want to put AI in every device you own. Dag Kittlaus, who cofounded Siri, left Apple five years ago, but now he's back with a new voice assistant named Viv that he predicts will change the way we interact with not just our phones, but our home appliances, cars, and more. Viv has gotten a lot of hype for a product that hasn't shipped yet, but Kittlaus demoed Viv publicly for the first time at TechCrunch Disrupt on Monday. Right now, Viv is an iOS app, though it won't always be. You open the app and ask the assistant questions or issue commands.

The TechCrunch conference is an event that swoops in on the startup scenes of the US and Europe, gathering for appraisal the technology world's rising movers, shakers and innovators. It's widely regarded as the place to get a feel for what's happening at the industry's grassroots – which is exactly what PwC Innovation Manager Marina Paronetto headed to London to do. As it turns out, it was the brains behind the machine – artificial intelligence – that was the star of 2016's show. It was said in sarcasm, but MC Jordan Crook couldn't have been more accurate when she said that TechCrunch's theme for its latest Disrupt conference was artificial intelligence. From what I saw, every solution on show here featured an element of AI.

Tech investor Marc Andreessen took the stage Tuesday at TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco. SAN FRANCISCO – For tech entrepreneurs, these are both the best of times and the gnarliest of times. But only standout ideas with either unique intellectual property or quantifiable traction are likely to benefit in the form of investments or acquisitions from this buoyant climate. "Only strong companies are getting acquired," Greylock Ventures' Josh Elman told attendees at TechCrunch Disrupt Tuesday, citing the 1 billion price tags paid for self-driving car startup Cruise Automation (General Motors) and Dollar Shave Club (Unilever). Elman might have added another recent purchase to the list, Microsoft's 26 billion spend for professional networking site LinkedIn, founded by Elman's fellow Greylock colleague and panelist, Reid Hoffman.

Diane Greene, executive vice president of Google Cloud Enterprise, appeared on stage at TechCrunch Disrupt San Francisco with TechCrunch editor Matt Burns today, and talked about her role running Google's massive cloud business. She came on board last year when Google bought her startup, bebop Technologies for 348 million, and she immediately brought with her enterprise credibility. Her resume includes helping start VMware before selling the company to EMC for 635 million, then helping bring it public under the EMC federation in 2007. At VMware, she worked on the virtual machine technology that would become the basic building blocks for cloud infrastructure services. Today, with that depth of experience, she is trying to help Google catch market leaders Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure.

Tech investor Marc Andreessen took the stage Tuesday at TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco. SAN FRANCISCO – For tech entrepreneurs, these are both the best of times and the gnarliest of times. But only standout ideas with either unique intellectual property or quantifiable traction are likely to benefit from this buoyant climate in the form of investments or acquisitions. "Only strong companies are getting acquired," Greylock Ventures' Josh Elman told attendees at TechCrunch Disrupt Tuesday, citing the 1 billion price tags paid for self-driving car startup Cruise Automation (General Motors) and Dollar Shave Club (Unilever). Elman might have added another recent purchase to the list, Microsoft's 26 billion spend for professional networking site LinkedIn, founded by Elman's fellow Greylock colleague and panelist, Reid Hoffman.