Sana Labs, a Stockholm-based online training platform, raised $18 million (approx £13.1 million) in a Series A round led by EQT Ventures. The funding round brings the total amount raised to $23 million (approx £17 million). The new funding will be used to invest more in technology R&D, sales-focused marketing, and people to make this happen.
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Being a student secretary of the Fire and Security Association of India at my college, I have conducted various surveys and workshops on methodologies to avert the dangers caused due to fire. As an AI enthusiast, I have always aspired to come with innovative solutions to tackle such issues. My experience in the fire and safety domain with competence in building AI solutions motivated me to think of possible solutions to tackle problems faced by the fire department.
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Machine learning was among the fastest growing technologies in terms of U.S. patent grants during 2020, an annual survey reveals. AI and machine learning ranked fourth in a list of patent applications and awards, followed closely by advances in quantum computing.
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To drive American leadership in the field of AI into the future, the National Artificial Intelligence Initiative Office has been launched by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). The new agency was established under the American Artificial Intelligence Initiative Act of 2020, which was enacted and codified into law to expand many existing AI policies and initiatives throughout the federal government.
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Nayya, an insurance benefits management platform, today announced it has closed $11 million in a series A round led by Felicis Ventures. Nayya says the funds will be put toward product research and development as it seeks to acquire new talent and customers.
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Molecula, which is developing a cloud-based feature store for AI and machine learning workloads, today announced it has raised $17.6 million. The company says the proceeds will be put toward accelerating the launch of its managed cloud service and bolstering its sales and marketing efforts.
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Rapyd, which is developing an all-in-one payments solutions platform, today announced it has raised $300 million, bringing the company’s total raised to over $450 million. CEO Arik Shtilman said the funds will be used to double the size of Rapyd’s engineering and product teams and explore acquisitions globally.
Virtual card spend is projected to grow to $355 billion by 2022, up from $136 billion in 2017, according to Accenture. With annual transaction volumes anticipated to surpass $9 trillion, businesses are increasingly investigating unified payment solutions.
Rapyd offers solutions on the web and mobile, including the ability to accept cash, bank transfers, e-wallets, local debit cards, and over 900 alternative payment methods in more than 100 regions. The platform supports disbursements in over 170 countries and multicurrency settlement to a single file across 65 currencies. Moreover, it delivers real-time foreign exchange, ID verification via document scanning, and anti-money laundering and counter financing terrorism (AML/CFT) services.
Rapyd offers an API, a software development kit that integrates with existing apps, and responsive designs for merchant checkout flows. The checkout solution can stand alone or coexist with gateways and local payment systems, while Rapyd’s white-label wallet platform ships with features targeting retail shops and rewards programs.
Rapyd competes with a number of well-established companies in a financial tech sector estimated at $147.37 billion as of year-end 2018, including Ayden, PayPal, and Stripe. But Rapyd hit around $100 million in revenue last year at a pre-money valuation of $1.2 billion, driven by the fees it levies on payments and multicurrency transactions (3.5% plus 30 cents for funds in and $1.50 plus 1% for exchanges).
Over the past year, Rapyd has expanded its network with new and existing products for Thailand, South Korea, Mexico, India, Brazil, and the U.K. It also acquired Iceland-based payment card service provider Korta, inked agreements with Visa and Mastercard, launched an anti-fraud service called Rapyd Protect, and partnered with payments technology company InComm to support cash bill pay and load solutions at participating retailers in the U.S.
“The demand for online payments has skyrocketed following the restrictions due to the effects of COVID-19, and as a company, we are well-placed to provide businesses across the globe with the solutions they need and to get them up and running fast,” Shtilman said in a statement. “To kick off 2021 with this substantial round of funding to further invest in our platform is a tremendous vote of confidence both in the growing need for local payment solutions that can be deployed at scale globally, and more specifically in our vision and company.”
Coatue led the series D funding round announced today, with participation from Spark Capital, Avid Ventures, FJ Labs, and Latitude. Current backers General Catalyst, Oak HC/FT, Tiger Global, Target Global, Durable Capital, Tal Capital, and Entrée Capital also contributed. Rapyd has offices in London and Mountain View, California.
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The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) today announced the launch of the National Artificial Intelligence Initiative Office, an organization that will coordinate and oversee national AI policy initiatives for the United States government. “The Office is charged with overseeing and implementing the United States national AI strategy and will serve as the central hub for federal coordination and collaboration in AI research and policymaking across the government, as well as with private sector, academia, and other stakeholders,” according to a White House statement.
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Workato, which offers an integration and automation platform for businesses, today announced it has raised $110 million at a post-money valuation of $1.7 billion. The company says it will put the funds toward product innovation and technology development, expanding its customer success program, launching its first user conference in 2021, and investing in scaling teams in the U.S. and internationally.
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M-Files announced it has raised $80 million as the Finnish company develops AI that automates the messy process of organizing and tracking internal documents and data for enterprises. Bregal Milestone led the round, which included previous investors Partech, Tesi, and Draper Esprit.
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Horizon Robotics, a Chinese automotive AI chip startup that is developing specialized, complex chips for use in autonomous vehicles, has raised another $400 million in its latest C2 round of funding. That’s on top of $150 million in C2 funding that it secured earlier in December, according to the company, bringing its total C2 funding so far to $550 million. Horizon Robotics had announced late in 2020 that it was pursuing a total of $700 million in C2 round funding.
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Pegasystems announced today it has acquired Qurious.io, a provider of a cloud service that analyzes voice calls in real time to enable customer service representatives to better determine their next best course of action. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
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Komodo Health, a company that is meshing big data, AI, and analytics to create a digital map of the U.S. health care system, announced that it quietly secured a $44 million cash injection last year in a series D round of funding led by Iconiq.
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Dina, a Chicago-based startup developing an AI-powered at-home care platform, today announced it has raised $7 million. The company says the capital will be used to expand its products and support its mission to help the health care industry transition to in-home care.
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Ambarella has unveiled the CV5 AI Vision Processor to handle 8K image processing for car, consumer, crone, and robot cameras. The new 5-nanometer camera system on chip (SoC) is the latest in the company’s CVflow family, and it consumes under 2 watts of power. The chip is about 4 times more powerful than the previous-generation chip.
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Internet of Things or IOT is a newest and remarkable take on Internet itself. The Internet is a fantastic thing itself. The Internet ensures you to do things that were earlier admired impossible. Usually the people do video calling with a person. Learning something new. How do you get to know what is happening in the other corner of the world? Yes! Through internet allows you to do all that and a great deal and more.
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The size of the beauty and corrective industry is monstrous, with its valuation ascending as high as $532 billion USD. Notwithstanding, it actually hasn’t seen the entrance of cutting edge innovations, even subsequent to having a particularly huge market cap.
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The fabled “chicken crossing the road” provides useful fodder for considering the advent of self-driving cars coping with erratic intrusions in the roadway.
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What drives your customers to churn? What leads to a wow experience? What makes them buy your product? In a nut-shell, understand the factors that drive a metric you’re interested in. Power BI makes excellent use of Machine Learning and AI capabilities to analyze your data, rank the factors that matter, and display them as key influencers. If you are a product manager or marketing professional who wants to understand what drives certain customer behavior, you can find that out with a few clicks.
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This article is about Automation and Artificial Intelligence in Software Engineering: Experiences, Challenges, and Opportunities. It represents a paper published at a highly ranked HAWAII INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON SYSTEM SCIENCES (HICSS).
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