Intuit, the business and financial tools company best known for its TurboTax software, made news last week for its acquisition of Mailchimp, and is now announcing a corporate venture capital arm, Intuit Ventures, to identify growth opportunities and trends beneficial for its key customers -- small businesses and consumers. The company is the latest to get into corporate venture, joining a group that includes WorkDay, Salesforce and Zoom. CEO Sasan Goodarzi spoke exclusively with TechCrunch about the new venture, which will focus its initial investments in the areas of fintech, e-commerce infrastructure, platforms and enablement, virtual experts/digital advice and AI/ML. The initial idea for the venture arm came about a year ago, when Goodarzi and Intuit's chief corporate strategy and development officer Anton Hanebrink were discussing the acceleration of internal and external company pipelines and how to align those with the company's mission and identify big opportunities. The VC arm is one of the ways they would do this, which would enable the company to accelerate innovation while also learning from companies, Goodarzi said.

US artificial intelligence firm Digital Reasoning has received investment from Standard Chartered Bank's innovation, investment and ventures arm, SC Ventures, that brings its Series D-1 funding round total to US$40 million. The artificial intelligence (AI) and machine-learning company will partner with Standard Chartered to expand its financial services product offerings in communications surveillance across Asia Pacific, the Middle East and other international markets. The fresh funds will help it to expand into use cases within financial institutions that are adjacent to its core business of e-communications and voice surveillance for compliance, the company said. It will also support the company's efforts to broaden its pre-trained model catalog, supporting growth in financial markets across Asia, the Middle East and Africa. Digital Reasoning's Series D-1 funding round had a first close last year, led by BNP Paribas with participation from Barclays, Square Capital, Goldman Sachs, Nasdaq, Lemhi Ventures, HCA, and the Partnership Fund for New York City.

Pillo is a new healthcare companion robot expected to ship in Q4 2018 that combines voice-first technology with artificial intelligence. The companion robot market will be an estimated $34.1 billion by 2022 according to a 2017 research report by P&S Market Research. The same report noted that global aging population has driven personal robots markets in developed regions. With a growing emphasis on personalized healthcare and better engagement with consumers through technology including customer healthcare apps and augmented reality, virtual reality and artificial intelligence (AI) to deliver more effective and cost-efficient digital therapeutics, a healthcare companion robot could become another tool in the intelligent healthcare market. Pillo Health and Orbita are working on an in-home companion robot that combines artificial intelligence with voice technology expected to ship in Q4 2018.

We dug into the private market bets made by major computer chip companies, including GPU makers. Our analysis encompasses the venture arms of NVIDIA, Intel, Samsung, AMD, and more. Recent developments in the semiconductor industry have been sending mixed signals. Stories about Moore's Law slowing have grown common, but analysts affirm that the latest crop of chips (specifically Intel's newest 10-nanometer technology) prove Moore's Law is still alive and well. Meanwhile, the vast application of graphics hardware in AI has propelled GPU (graphics processing unit) maker NVIDIA into tech juggernaut status: the company's shares were the best-performing stock over the past year.

We dug into the private market bets made by major computer chip companies, including GPU makers. Our analysis encompasses the venture arms of NVIDIA, Intel, Samsung, AMD, and more. Recent developments in the semiconductor industry have been sending mixed signals. Stories about Moore's Law slowing have grown common, but analysts affirm that the latest crop of chips (specifically Intel's newest 10-nanometer technology) prove Moore's Law is still alive and well. Meanwhile, the vast application of graphics hardware in AI has propelled GPU (graphics processing unit) maker NVIDIA into tech juggernaut status: the company's shares were the best-performing stock over the past year.

We dug into the private market bets made by major computer chip companies, including GPU makers. Our analysis encompasses the venture arms of NVIDIA, Intel, Samsung, AMD, and more. Recent developments in the semiconductor industry have been sending mixed signals. Stories about Moore's Law slowing have grown common, but analysts affirm that the latest crop of chips (specifically Intel's newest 10-nanometer technology) prove Moore's Law is still alive and well. Meanwhile, the vast application of graphics hardware in AI has propelled GPU (graphics processing unit) maker NVIDIA into tech juggernaut status: the company's shares were the best-performing stock over the past year.

We dug into the private market bets made by major computer chip companies, including GPU makers. Our analysis encompasses the venture arms of NVIDIA, Intel, Samsung, AMD, and more. Recent developments in the semiconductor industry have been sending mixed signals. Stories about Moore's Law slowing have grown common, but analysts affirm that the latest crop of chips (specifically Intel's newest 10-nanometer technology) prove Moore's Law is still alive and well. Meanwhile, the vast application of graphics hardware in AI has propelled GPU (graphics processing unit) maker NVIDIA into tech juggernaut status: the company's shares were the best-performing stock over the past year.

Combined, the 10 largest tech companies have acquired 50 AI companies in the last 5 years, targeting facial recognition startups, chatbots, chip makers, and more. Artificial intelligence is the future of big tech -- and is already an integral part of the consumer and enterprise products at Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, and Google. Now network connectivity providers like Cisco and Oracle are integrating advanced machine learning algorithms into their IT and cloud infrastructures, while GE has focused its efforts on AI for the industrial internet of things. Although the venture arms of Google and Intel have invested in a broad range of AI applications, their direct investments and acquisitions have been more strategically focused. We used CB Insights data to analyze the AI efforts of the top 10 tech companies in the US by market cap (as of 8/15/2017) and their corporate venture arms.

We dug into the private market bets made by major computer chip companies, including GPU makers. Our analysis encompasses the venture arms of NVIDIA, Intel, Samsung, AMD, and more. Recent developments in the semiconductor industry have been sending mixed signals. Stories about Moore's Law slowing have grown common, but analysts affirm that the latest crop of chips (specifically Intel's newest 10-nanometer technology) prove Moore's Law is still alive and well. Meanwhile, the vast application of graphics hardware in AI has propelled GPU (graphics processing unit) maker NVIDIA into tech juggernaut status: the company's shares were the best-performing stock over the past year.

Baidu Ventures exists on the front-lines of the Chinese search giant's push to brand itself as an artificial intelligence company. In an effort to bridge the AI ecosystems of China and the United States, Baidu Ventures is partnering with Comet Labs, a San Francisco-based fund specializing in machine intelligence. Unlike other venture capital firms looking to diversify into AI, Comet Labs lives exclusively in the space -- providing capital, technical resources and mentorship to its startups. Wei Liu, now head of Baidu's $700 million venture arm, was part of the founding team at Comet Labs before he was poached into the world of corporate venture. "Baidu founded Baidu Ventures to build an ecosystem around AI technology and do investment to help AI startups with money, technology and connections to industrial players," asserted Liu.