As more companies wade into the business of building artificial intelligence systems to help you drive (or do the driving for you), a startup founded by an ex-Apple computer vision specialist is open sourcing a huge dataset that can help them on their road to autonomy. Mapillary, a Swedish startup backed by Sequoia, Atomico and others… Continue reading Mapillary open sources 25k street-level images to train automotive AI systems
Category: Enterprise
Twilio stock takes a nosedive in after-hours trading on weak guidance
A good report on revenue wasn’t enough to keep Twilio stock from taking a dive in after-hours trading. What at first glance appeared to be a positive story very quickly divulged into a financial nightmare. Shares in the cloud-communications company have fallen 27 percent in after-hours trading. On the earnings call, Jeff Lawson addressed the unexpected… Continue reading Twilio stock takes a nosedive in after-hours trading on weak guidance
Facebook’s fastText library is now optimized for mobile
This morning Facebook’s AI Research (FAIR) lab released an update to fastText, its super-speedy open-source text classification library. When it was initially released, fastText shipped with pre-trained word vectors for 90 languages, but today it’s getting a boost to 294 languages. The release also brings enhancements to reduce model size and ultimately memory demand. Text classifiers like… Continue reading Facebook’s fastText library is now optimized for mobile
Docker gets a new CEO
There is change in the air for Docker, the company that, more than anybody else, helped make software containers popular among developers. But while Docker kicked off this movement, it’s now under pressure from the growing ecosystem of Kubernetes-based services and other startups that threaten to drown out the earlier leader of this movement. So… Continue reading Docker gets a new CEO
Cisco scoops up yet another cloud company, acquiring SD-WAN startup Viptela for $610 M
Cisco has been rather acquisitive in recent years buying 19 companies since 2015, and today it announced it was acquiring cloud-based SD-WAN vendor Viptela for $610 million in cash. Viptela was founded in 2012 and had raised over $108 million, including its most recent $75 million round just last May. The $610 million price tag… Continue reading Cisco scoops up yet another cloud company, acquiring SD-WAN startup Viptela for $610 M
Equinix completes $3.6 billion deal to buy 29 data centers from Verizon
Equinix, an international data center company based in Redwood City, California, announced today that it had completed the purchase of 29 data centers from Verizon for $3.6 billion. The deal was announced in December. Verizon owns AOL, which owns TechCrunch. The acquisition greatly expands the Equinix footprint including giving it access to to Latin America through… Continue reading Equinix completes $3.6 billion deal to buy 29 data centers from Verizon
Tencent to open AI research center in Seattle
Chinese tech conglomerate Tencent will be opening a new AI research center in Seattle, according to The Information. The company has long had a core office in Palo Alto, but this will be its first major machine intelligence R&D effort in the country. Earlier this week Tencent announced that it would open its first data… Continue reading Tencent to open AI research center in Seattle
Microsoft meets expectations with $23.6B in revenue, Azure revenue up 93%
Microsoft just reported earnings for the last quarter. The company reported non-GAAP revenue of $23.6 billion and non-GAAP earnings per share of $0.73. Wall Street’s cadre of crack analysts expected the company’s earnings per share to come in at around $0.70, with revenue hitting about $23.6 billion. In the year-ago quarter, Microsoft reported earnings per share… Continue reading Microsoft meets expectations with $23.6B in revenue, Azure revenue up 93%
Marketing tech company Zeta Global raises $140M at a $1.3B valuation
Zeta Global, the marketing tech company that has recently acquired the likes of eBay’s enterprise arm and Acxiom Impact, is preparing for another round of acquisitions and investments in its technology. To do so, the company today announced that it has raised a $140 million Series F round. The round is a bit unusual in that… Continue reading Marketing tech company Zeta Global raises $140M at a $1.3B valuation
UiPath raises $30M to build ‘software robots’ for internal business tasks
The world is awash with bots these days — applications the run either partly or entirely using natural language processing, machine learning, computer vision and other artificial intelligence technologies to help consumers ask and answer questions, buy things and get other stuff done. In the enterprise equivalent, a company that is building something akin to this for… Continue reading UiPath raises $30M to build ‘software robots’ for internal business tasks