Company developments: Siemens Unveils Simulation Tool for Testing of Autonomous Vehicles – May. 24th, 2019 (Design News) Known as PAVE360, the new tool allows developers to design and test an autonomous vehicle system-on-chip (SoC) and its surrounding electronic components in a completely virtual environment. “We don’t just model the analog or electromechanical systems,” noted David… Read More »
China’s focus on facial recognition continues to expand to various use cases. The latest? Pandas. Our favorite bear is now the subject of a new app developed by China’s Research and Conservation Centre. Given there’s less than 2,000 wild pandas left, the government is focusing on ways to conserve the population. More weekly news below.… Read More »
Two big M&A announcements this week in the AI space. The first one is Salesforce, who acquired Bonobo AI out of Israel for an undisclosed price. Bonobo AI specializes in analyzing customer interactions for sales teams. Acquisition clearly makes sense for Salesforce.
The other big acquisition this week is Square acquiring Eloquent Labs, who provides a conversational AI assistant named “Ellie”. This acquisition should help bolster Square’s NLP capabilities. Other weekly news can be found below.
Lots of news this week on privacy in the world of AI. China is drafting up a bill to regulate the collection of biometric data, while in the U.S. citizens of Oakland and Brooklyn are fighting the use of facial recognition technology. The precedent set by these ongoing legal matters will have a big impact on how other cities/countries approach privacy regulations going forward. More weekly news can be found below.
Relatively slow week in the AI world. Big news comes from Coursera, who raised a $103mm Series E round. The education tech startup has attracted a lot of attention in the past few years and plans to use the proceeds to further expand internationally.