Company developments: Aptiv’s self-driving cars hit 50,000 ride milestone in Las Vegas – Jun. 14, 2019 (NBC) Their fleet currently offers ride-sharing options through Lyft, as users have the option to request the self-driving cars if they’d like to Facebook to open third London office with 100 new AI roles – Jun. 12, 2019 (VentureBeat)… Read More »
Big news this week for AI M&A with McDonald’s acquiring an Israeli AI startup for $300mm and Daimler Trucks acquiring an autonomous truck startup for an undisclosed amount. For those interested in reading more about the autonomous truck industry, take a look at one of my earlier posts on the industry. I expect to see a lot more M&A activity going forward.
This week the autonomous trucking world added another Unicorn. TuSimple raised a $95mm Series D round to expand its autonomous truck fleet to over 50 vehicles by June. Definitely a player to look out for in this area. Other weekly news can be found below. Company developments: Waymo’s autonomous vehicles leave Apple in the dust… Read More »
The AI research capabilities of Microsoft continue to expand. This week they opened two separate AI labs in China.
The first will be located in Nanchang city and will focus on VR in addition to AI applications in established manufacturing companies. The second will be located in Shanghai and will focus on IoT in addition to AI. It’s clear Microsoft has gained favor with the Chinese government as these are two major developments with regards to their China strategy.
Extremely busy week in the AI world, particularly because of the 2019 annual CES conference. Lots of companies announced new product developments, partnerships, and investment in their AI strategy.
One of the biggest CES developments came from Xiaomi, who announced a $1.5bn investment in AI and smart devices. The recently IPO’d tech company is looking to expand aggressively, likely driven in part from the Chinese stock market’s recent sell off. Other weekly news can be found below.
Big week for fundraising and autonomous vehicle related partnerships. Highlights include Kroger’s partnership with Nuro for driverless grocery deliveries, Ford’s partnership with Baidu, Nvidia/Bosch/Volkswagen partnership, and Audi’s partnership with Cognata. It’s becoming obvious that these partnerships are vital to stay competitive in the space. Meanwhile, both Microsoft and IBM have made progress with eliminating bias… Read More »
One industry that AI is already having an enormous impact on is the logistics industry. As such, I’ve decided to pursue a series of posts relating to four main areas of logistics being impacted by AI. These areas are 1. Truckload shipping 2. Air / drone shipping 3. Maritime shipping and 4. Rail freight shipping. This first article will focus on truckload shipping. I’ll provide a quick overview of the trucking industry, my thoughts on the top use cases of AI in the industry, and highlight AI startups tackling these use cases.
This week’s news features interesting developments with regards to fundraising. Sinovation Ventures landed Spanish bank BBVA as a new LP, and BenevolentAI raised over $100mm to continue its development of AI for drug discovery. Company developments: Jack Ma says Alibaba ‘doing a lot of research’ on driverless cars – Apr. 19, 2018 (Phys.org) “What we… Read More »