Phocas Software‘s cloud data analytics tools might be best known in Australia, where they’re used by Thermo Fisher Scientific, Fiskars Royal Doulton, and Burson Automotive to streamline employee access to key financial data, but the company is planning to become more aggressive globally in 2021. Today, Phocas announced that it raised $34 million to bolster its AI capabilities and reach new…
Atlanta, Georgia-based Verusen, a startup leveraging AI to build a connected supply chain, today raised $8 million in series A funding co-led by Forte Ventures and Flyover Capital. The company says it’ll put the funds toward R&D as it expands the size of its…
AI holds the key to even better AI
January 29, 2021
For all the talk about how artificial intelligence technology is transforming entire industries, the reality is that most businesses struggle to obtain real value from AI. 65% of organizations that have invested in AI in recent years haven’t yet seen any tangible gains…
Researchers propose AI system that summarizes historical texts
January 28, 2021
Summarizing historical text can help people gather, organize, and share knowledge, but cultural and linguistic changes and the sheer volume of archives can make interpreting historical text challenging even for experts. Researchers at the University of Sheffield, Beihang University, and the Open University in the U.K. recently attempted to tackle this problem using AI and machine learning…
The World Economic Forum (WEF) is launching the Global AI Action Alliance today, with more than 100 organizations participating at launch. The steering committee includes business leaders like IBM CEO Arvind Krishna, multinational organizations like the OECD and UNESCO, and…
MIT CSAIL claims its breast cancer prediction AI works equally well across demographic groups
January 28, 2021
Researchers at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) say they’ve created a breast cancer risk-assessment algorithm that shows consistent performance across patients from the U.S., Europe, and Asia. This new algorithm captures the…
Ukko raises $40 million to address food allergies with AI
January 27, 2021
Ukko, a 30-employee biotech company using AI to investigate solutions for food allergies and sensitivities, today raised $40 million in a series B round led by Bayer’s Leaps by Bayer. Ukko says the new funding will allow it to enter clinical trials with an investigational therapeutic for peanut allergies while accelerating development of its synthetic gluten for people with celiac and other…
A burgeoning subfield of AI focuses on leveraging models to improve the performance of robots that follow instructions given by people. These models generate directions (e.g., “Walk up the stairs and enter the first room on the left”) that ostensibly improve robots’…
Tasker's Android phone automation connects with Google Assistant
January 27, 2021
People have long used Tasker to take care of repetitive tasks on their Android device, or to customize its features based on things like whether they’re at home or at the office. Now the app’s features are a little easier to use since you can trigger them via Google…
Grimes and Endel bring their AI-powered sleep sounds to Android
January 27, 2021
Last October, Endel announced that it had partnered with Grimes for a special ‘soundscape’ inside its music app, which is meant to help you focus, relax or fall asleep. The collaboration was called AI Lullaby and, as you might have guessed from the name, combined artificial intelligence with Grimes’ original music and vocals. There was just one problem: it was only available on iOS. The…
