Slowly but surely, Amazon’s AWS cloud computing unit has become a major player in the call/contact center space with its Amazon Connect cloud-based (and AI-centric) contact center service, which launched back in 2017. Today, companies like Air Canada, Dish Network and U.S. Bank use the platform for their customer service needs. At its annual re:Invent […]
AWS wants to make your call center interactions less painful Read More »
Amazon Japan has said it will collaborate with Japan’s Fair Trade Commission (JFTC) after the watchdog conducted an on-site inspection related to suspected violations of anti-monopoly laws. The e-commerce giant is under suspicion of inappropriately urging vendors to lower their prices on its online shopping platform in return for better product placement, as first reported
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Just last year, Inflection AI was as hot as a startup could be, releasing best-in-class AI models it claimed could outperform technology from OpenAI, Meta, and Google. That’s a stark contrast compared to today, as Inflection’s new CEO tells TechCrunch that his startup is simply no longer trying to compete on that front. Between then
Inflection CEO says it’s done trying to make next generation AI models Read More »
Volta, a new startup with a team split between two headquarters in Milan and Paris, has secured a €6 million pre-seed round ($6.3 million) to develop a new vertical software-as-a-service platform focused on B2B sales. In more practical terms, the Volta team pitches its product as an equivalent to Shopify but focused on B2B transactions.
Volta, a Shopify for B2B transactions, raises biggest pre-seed round of Italy Read More »
Anthropic is proposing a new standard for connecting AI assistants to the systems where data lives. Called the Model Context Protocol, or MCP for short, Anthropic says the standard, which it open sourced today, could help AI models produce better, more relevant responses to queries. MCP lets models draw data from sources like business tools
Anthropic proposes a new way to connect data to AI chatbots Read More »
Brightcove, a cloud platform that helps businesses manage and monetize video content, is being taken private by Italian technology company Bending Spoons, in a deal valued at $233 million. Founded in 2004, Brightcove develops tools and services for creating, hosting, streaming, marketing, and monetizing video content, with clients including Marriott Hotels, Ford, and Johnson &
Bending Spoons is taking video platform Brightcove private in $233M acquisition Read More »
On October 21, a new ticker opened to Nasdaq traders: NBIS, a truncation of Nebius, a fledgling player in the AI cloud infrastructure space. Casual observers could be forgiven for wondering where this company had come from, as there had been little in the way of the usual fanfare that surrounds most startups’ journey to
The curious case of Nebius, the publicly traded AI infrastructure ‘startup’ Read More »
WordPress.com owner Automattic has added another company to its portfolio of online content creation tools and services with its acquisition of Grammarly competitor, Harper. Although it’s competing in the same space as the popular grammar checker used by many online writers, Harper’s tool is aimed at developers, open source, and works to maintain privacy by
WordPress.com owner Automattic snaps up grammar checker Harper Read More »
AI may be the hottest thing since sliced bread. But that doesn’t mean it’s getting easier to develop and run. According to a recent Boston Consulting Group poll, 74% of organizations are struggling to derive value from their AI investments. William Falcon, the creator of PyTorch Lightning, a popular open source AI framework, says that
Lightning looks to make managing AI a piece of cake Read More »
Belgium-based Odoo decided to use open-source tools as a way to attack the enterprise resource planning (ERP) software market, going up against giants like SAP. Fast forward a couple of decades and it’s now picking up €500 million in secondary investment — or around $527M at current exchange rates — led by CapitalG (Alphabet’s venture
