SoftBank’s Graphcore Picks Bengaluru for £1bn AI Campus, 500 Jobs Incoming

Graphcore, now a wholly owned subsidiary of SoftBank Group, is making a major move in India with the launch of a new AI Engineering Campus in Bengaluru. Here's a quick breakdown of the announcement:

Graphcore's £1bn India Expansion

• Location: Bengaluru, India
• Investment: Up to £1 billion over the next 10 years
• Jobs Created: 500 new semiconductor roles
• Immediate Hiring: First 100 roles already open, spanning:
  • Silicon Logical Design
  • Physical Design
  • Verification
  • Characterization
  • Bring-up

This campus will be central to Graphcore’s efforts in building next-generation AI computing infrastructure, aligning with SoftBank’s broader ambition to lead in Artificial Super Intelligence platforms.

Graphcore: AI Chip Innovator

• Founded: 2016 in Bristol, UK by Nigel Toon and Simon Knowles
• Industry: Semiconductors and AI hardware
• Core Product: Intelligence Processing Unit (IPU) — a novel processor architecture designed specifically for machine learning workloads
• Mission: To enable innovators to build next-generation AI applications and democratize access to machine intelligence
• Ownership: Now a wholly owned subsidiary of SoftBank Group Corp, continuing to operate under the Graphcore name

Graphcore competes with companies like Nvidia in the AI compute space, and its IPU architecture is known for handling entire ML models inside the processor — a departure from traditional GPU-based systems.

AI Accelerator Comparison (2025) 

Feature / Chip	Graphcore IPU (Bow-200)	Nvidia Blackwell B200 GPU	Google TPU v6e (Trillium)	AMD MI350 GPU
Architecture	Massively parallel IPU tiles	GPU with Transformer Engine	Custom ASIC for ML workloads	GPU with unified memory
Memory	900 MB per IPU tile	180 GB HBM3e per GPU	32 GB HBM per chip	128 GB HBM3e
Bandwidth	~1.5 TB/s (system level)	Up to 8 TB/s	1.6 TB/s per chip	~5.2 TB/s
Compute (FP16)	~350 TFLOPS (system level)	4.5 PFLOPS	918 TFLOPS BF16	~2.5 PFLOPS
Compute (INT8)	Not optimized	9 PFLOPS	1.836 PFLOPS	~5 PFLOPS
Scalability	3D wafer-scale IPU pods	DGX B200 clusters	256-chip TPU pods	MI350 clusters
Target Workloads	Sparse ML, graph networks	Transformer-based LLMs	Large-scale ML training	HPC + AI inference
Power Efficiency	High for sparse workloads	Improved over H100	Optimized for datacenter	Competitive with Nvidia
Deployment	Graphcore IPU systems	Nvidia DGX platforms	Google Cloud TPU pods	Enterprise GPU servers

Thales to Deliver the World’s First Fully Integrated Unmanned Mine Countermeasures System for the Royal Navy and French “Marine Nationale”

MMCM system at sea ©Thales 

• France and the United Kingdom marked the tenth anniversary of the Lancaster House treaties by signing a joint contract for Thales to launch the production of the MMCM (Maritime Mine Counter Measures) program, under Phase 2. Phase 1 initiated in 2015 was to demonstrate and qualify the technology.
• With this contract, French and British Navies equip themselves with the world’s first fully integrated unmanned mine countermeasures system of systems.
• The system has been tested and demonstrated under real operational scenarios at sea in France and the United Kingdom.
• Thales, together with its main partners (ECA Group, L3Harris and Saab), is now awarded to deliver these systems starting from 2022 to the Navies.

Following the first phase of the program in which two demonstrators have successfully proven their operational performances at sea, France and the United Kingdom marked the tenth anniversary of the Lancaster House treaties by signing a joint contract for Thales to start the production phase of MMCM to deliver eight unmanned mine hunting systems (four for France and four for the United Kingdom). 

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20201126005783/en/


With the threat of mines and improvised explosive devices present in all conflicts involving naval forces, countries need to strengthen the protection of their maritime domain, to ensure the protection of their assets and to safeguard the freedom of civil navigation. At the same time, it is essential to limit human exposure to mines. With 50 years of expertise serving navies around the world, Thales develops technologies that enable the transition from conventional solutions, such as minehunters, to unmanned solutions. The MMCM program is the first step in the renewal of the operational concept for mine warfare in France and the United Kingdom, based on the use of unmanned systems which could potentially replace traditional minehunters.

This is a step change in capability, improving performances, productivity and removing the need to place members of the armed forces in harm’s way. It strengthens the leadership of the French Navy and Royal Navy as world leaders in both mine hunting and unmanned systems in the maritime domain.

The subsystems developed for the programme by Thales and its partners include Unmanned Surface Vehicles (USV) to transport and connect solutions and a cutting-edge sonar (SAMDIS) offering unique Single Path Multi View capability to identify and classify threats. The SAMDIS sonar can be carried by Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUV) or by Towed Synthetic Aperture Multiviews (TSAM) vehicle operated from the USV. The USV can also carry a Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) to neutralize the threats. The entire system is remotely supervised by operators working from a Portable Operational Centre (POC) capable of controlling up to three systems in parallel at sea.

MMCM is the only proven system to offer advanced technologies, including autonomy, to improve performance and productivity thanks to the combination of unrivalled real time user experience using big data exchanges with trusted augmented artificial intelligence (A2I) to provide huge improvement of customer trust in operation clearance and increase the security of national interests. As a result of Thales’s open-architecture approach to MMCM, these new technologies can be easily integrated into the overall system, providing the navies with the opportunity to introduce new operational capabilities, in a planned way, throughout the life of the system.

After the success of the first configuration conducted under real operational conditions with the complete system, Thales is now fully committed to deliver the first operational systems to French and British navies by 2022. This program testifies of the exemplary cooperation between the two states and industrial teams and anchors Thales’s unique expertise and World leading position in conventional MCM, supporting over half the world’s anti-mine vessels with over 300 systems in service.

“Thales is grateful to France and the United Kingdom for trusting such an important technology transition with the Thales teams in France and the UK. To date during trials, the MMCM systems and its assets have covered the equivalent of 30.000 soccer fields at sea, sometimes with very rough sea conditions. This is indeed a step change in how Navies will be able to respond in the future to vicious threats such as mines and improvised explosive devices at sea.” Alexis Morel, VP Underwater Systems, Thales.

About Thales

Thales (Euronext Paris: HO) is a global high technology leader investing in digital and “deep tech” innovations –connectivity, big data, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity and quantum technology – to build a future we can all trust, which is vital to the development of our societies. The company provides solutions, services and products that help its customers –businesses, organisations and states – in the defence, aeronautics, space, transportation and digital identity and security markets to fulfil their critical missions, by placing humans at the heart of the decision-making process.

With 83,000 employees in 68 countries, Thales generated sales of €19 billion in 2019 (on a basis including Gemalto over 12 months).

GrAI Matter Labs Raises $14M to Bring Fastest AI per Watt to Every Device on the Edge

GrAI Matter Labs, a pioneer of brain inspired ultra-low latency computing, today announced its latest financing round of $14 million. The round was led by iBionext, joined by all existing investors and newly welcomed Bpifrance through the Future Investment Program and Celeste Management. The company will utilize the funds to accelerate design and market launch of its first GrAI® full-stack AI system-on-chip platform, to deliver on customer needs at the edge. 

GrAI Matter Labs’ programmable NeuronFlow™ technology enables industry-leading inference latency efficiently – more than an order of magnitude better than competing solutions. Its current accelerator chip GrAI One and the GrAI One HDK are available for product evaluation and application programming. The upcoming GrAI® full-stack AI system-on-chip platform will drive a significant step in visual inference capabilities in robotics, industrial automation, AR/VR and surveillance products and markets.

“Securing this funding round is a testament to our breakthrough innovation and market potential. We are excited to bring the fastest AI per Watt to every device on the edge,” said Ingolf Held, CEO of GrAI Matter Labs. “This funding will help us to partner with application specialists and integrators, and to deliver best-in-class visual inference performance, system-on-chip platforms and end-to-end applications to our customers.”

“GrAI Matter Labs has demonstrated a unique architecture capability with NeuronFlow and GrAI One - an industry first silicon compute and machine learning architecture based on learnings from biology and the human brain,” said Bernard Gilly, Chairman of iBionext. “We are thrilled with the prospects of GrAI Matter Labs and look forward to grow the company to become a major success.”

“GrAI Matter Labs has established a technology leadership position within the rapidly emerging edge computing market,” said Dimitri Boulanger, CEO of Celeste Management. “We expect the company to develop into a leading AI computing platform supplier across segments of this market, which is set to grow to billions of dollars over the coming years.”

“The market for edge AI inferencing is the most active segment of the AI chip market. GML has developed several innovations that combined have produced an outstanding AI accelerator,” said Michael Azoff, Chief Analyst, Kisaco Research. “It is exploiting sparsity (spatial and temporal) in the input data that is the stand-out approach taken by GML.” 

About GrAI Matter Labs 

GML’s mission is to bring fastest edge AI per Watt for sensor analytics and machine learning to every device on the edge. GrAI Matter Labs has offices in Paris / France, in Eindhoven / The Netherlands and in San Jose / Silicon Valley. It is led by a team of visionary and seasoned engineers, and is backed by leading investors including iBionext, 360 Capital Partners and 3T Finance. For more information, please visit www.graimatterlabs.ai.

Call for Code Names India-Based AI Farm as the APAC Regional Winner

Agrolly wins global prize for innovative solution to help small farmers as they struggle with effects of climate change

New initiative enables global developers to leverage proven Call for Code platform to help combat racial injustice

Where most people see challenges, developers see possibilities. That's certainly been the case in 2020. Call for Code founding partner IBM (NYSE: IBM) and its creator, David Clark Cause, announced the Asia Pacific Regional Winner. AI Farm – an Indian entry – was named the Asia Pacific Regional Winner for an intelligent system that evaluates climate and soil conditions to provide farmers with information to adapt their crop strategies.

 
AI Farm will receive an award of $5,000 USD. The application is an intelligent system that aims to provide farmers with the information they need to adapt their crop strategies to optimize water usage and control disease. The solution is a low-cost system that uses sensors to monitor ground water levels, temperature, and humidity. The system uses the IBM Cloud, IBM Watson IoT platform, IBM Watson Visual Recognition, and Node-RED flows to create a hyperlocal weather forecast specific to the farm. The global winner, Agrolly, was recently announced and awarded the grand prize.
 
“Call for Code has become a marquee name among the world’s developer community as a platform to collaborate, improve technical skills, and tackle the world’s largest problems. Agrolly and AI Farm were both named top solutions this year, highlighting the importance of agriculture. Technology can help farmers combat growing challenges from climate change through the application of emerging technologies like cloud, AI and IoT. Call for Code has proven that the powerful combination of innovation and technology can pave the way for creating Indian-made solutions to tackle and solve relevant local challenges,” said Priya Mallya, Country Leader, Developer Ecosystems, IBM ISA.
 
The 2020 Call for Code Global Challenge asked developers to create solutions to help communities fight back against climate change and COVID-19. A panel of industry leaders, climate change experts, COVID-19 front line workers, and judges selected AI Farm as the Asia Pacific winner after a stringent selection process.
 
The global recognition went to Agrolly, an application to help the world’s small farmers cope with the environmental and business challenges of climate change. Another climate change solution, OffShip, received fifth place. Three COVID-19 solutions were also honored. Business Buddy was given second place, Safe Queue was given third place, and SchoolListIt was awarded fourth place.
 
Call for Code also introduced a new initiative—Call for Code for Racial Justice – inviting developers to apply their skills and ingenuity to combat systemic racism.  The new initiative began with Black IBMers and allies taking action with an internal IBM program called the Call for Code Emb(race) Challenge. Solutions created and developed through that program are now being opened to the world to build upon through Call for Code for Racial Justice. 
 
Call for Code unites hundreds of thousands of developers to create and deploy applications powered by open source technology that can tackle some of the world’s biggest challenges. Since its launch in 2018, this movement has grown to more than 400,000 developers and problem solvers across 179 nations, and has generated more than fifteen thousand solutions using technology including Red Hat OpenShift, IBM Cloud, IBM Watson, IBM Blockchain, data from The Weather Company, and APIs from ecosystem partners like HERE Technologies and IntelePeer. The global winner announcement came during a virtual event, the “2020 Call for Code Awards: A Global Celebration of Tech for Good.” A full replay can be watched here.

NITI Aayog Proposes Overseeing Body for Responsible Management of AI in India

For responsible management of Artificial Intelligence in India, Government think-tank Niti Aayog has proposed setting up an oversight body which will play an enabling role regarding technical, legal, policy and societal aspects of artificial intelligence (AI).


In its draft 'Working Document: Enforcement Mechanisms for Responsible #AIforAll', Niti Aayog said the oversight body must have industry representatives as well as experts from legal, humanities and social science fields.

"Use cases for Artificial Intelligence have emerged across sectors and the technology has shown rapid
growth over recent years. Approach to manage risks cannot be isolated. Such approaches must be highly participatory and must keep pace with technology. Risk across use cases and contexts vary and also evolve over time. One-size-fits-all approach is not sustainable.", said the document.

"A flexible risk-based approach must be adopted. In this regard, the National Strategy for Artificial
Intelligence proposes an Oversight Body.", said the draft.

Oversight body may identify design standards, guidelines and acceptable benchmarks for priority use
cases with sectoral regulators and experts. These may be made mandatory for public sector procurement

The oversight body must play an enabling role under the following broad areas -

1. Manage and update Principles for responsible AI in India
2. Research technical, legal,policy, societal issues of AI
3. Provide clarity on responsible behaviour through design structures, standards, guidelines, etc
4. Enable access to Responsible AI tools and techniques
5. Education and Awareness on Responsible AI
6. Coordinate with various sectoral AI regulators, identify gaps and harmonize policies across sectors
7. 'Represent India (and other emerging economies) in International AI dialogue.

Besides this, Niti Aayog has also proposed highly participatory advisory body called Council for Ethics and Technology, with a multi-disciplinary composition including Computer Science and AI experts, Legal and relevant sectoral experts, Humanities and Social Science experts , among few others.

Ethical Committees are accountable for enforcement of principles in the AI system’s lifecycle and must ensure the AI system is developed, deployed, operated and maintained in accordance with the Principles.

The Aayog has invited comments on the draft document by stakeholders by December 15.

The Niti Aayog had in June 2020 released a draft paper titled 'Towards Responsible#AIForAll' and had said there is a potential of large scale adoption of AI in a variety of social sectors.

The First Ever AI Santa Claus is Coming to Town for Christmas 2020, Powered by StoryFile

The artificial intelligence leader brings holiday magic to every home with Ask Santa, providing kids pandemic-proof, face-to-face conversations with Santa; StoryFile has made the interactive visits to his North Pole workshop free

The world's first AI Santa was created by StoryFile to make sure kids everywhere can talk to Santa Claus face-to-face, despite the pandemic. "After the past few months, I can imagine we are all in need of the holiday spirit," said StoryFile CEO Heather Smith. Visit now for free at AskSanta.com.

Are you on the naughty or nice list? This year the world's first AI Santa can tell you. "I think it's more than awesome that kids will be able to ask as many questions as they want in these virtual conversations," said AI Santa, who can be visited on any monitor, computer, mobile device, or screen. Free at AskSanta.com.

Los Angeles, CA, Nov. 19, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- StoryFile , the AI startup that is revolutionizing the media and storytelling landscape through its proprietary technology, brings Santa Claus home this holiday season. The COVID-19 pandemic is preventing hundreds of thousands of children from meeting Santa in person, but Ask Santa has a solution. StoryFile, the powerful natural language processor and cloud-based interactive conversational video platform, has created the world's first AI Santa. This personal experience with Santa will bring holiday cheer to those near and far, pushing past the challenges of social distancing. Visit now .

This online interaction with Santa is designed for families and children of all ages, especially for children aged 3 through 12. Users visit Santa at his Grotto in the North Pole (where he has just completed renovations on his red sled) and have a real-time, natural conversation. Ask Santa is available online at AskSanta.com , and can be accessed and showcased on any monitor, computer, mobile device, or screen. Ask Santa can also be life-sized or larger than life for use in a public setting. Santa is live now through Christmas, and will finish his AI duties on New Year's Eve.

"The StoryFile team decided to bring AI Santa to every child for the holiday season, since they wouldn't be able to visit him in person this year. I am very excited to announce that AI Santa is here and ready to talk to you all!" said StoryFile CEO Heather Smith . "We combined our innovative technology and passion for connecting people with the magic of Christmas. I hope families everywhere come together to speak with Santa and have a wonderful Holiday season. After the past few months, I can imagine we are all in need of the holiday spirit."

Are you on the naughty or nice list? This year the world's first AI Santa can tell you. "I think it's more than awesome that kids will be able to ask as many questions as they want in these virtual conversations," said AI Santa, who can be visited on any monitor, computer, mobile device, or screen. Free at AskSanta.com.

"We will get through these hard times and we can make it uniquely fun," said our AI Santa , also known as Santa Cortney. "Through AI can you imagine how exciting it will be to talk to Santa when he's at home in the North Pole? And when children can talk to Santa on Ask Santa from their own homes, I believe the comfort to spend more time with Santa this way and having many questions answered is more than awesome! So I am excited about these upcoming virtual visits! And just know this: There is always a little bit of Santa living in your heart. And Santa WILL always be around for Christmas!"

In order to ensure that every child has the opportunity to experience the holiday magic this year, regardless of circumstance, Ask Santa is free to use, and there is no time limit. Because the holiday season is the time for giving, Ask Santa, together with StoryFile and Red Sled Santa Foundation , will be accepting charitable donations to benefit the American Heart Association (AHA). All donations and contributions will go directly to the AHA to make long lasting impact. Giving to the AHA makes a dramatic impact in the fight against heart disease and stroke, in children and adults alike. We are encouraging kids to help kids by making a gift, spreading the holiday magic to save a child's life and improve lives through a variety of programs and initiatives.

"We are proud to support the American Heart Association. In a time of such uncertainty and chaos, Ask Santa will bring us all together in a safe and health-conscious way using AI. We hope our AI Santa will inspire people to give to the AHA and share the gift of a heartbeat," said Smith.

For more information or media requests for AI Santa and StoryFile's Heather Smith, contact alana@storyfile.com.

About StoryFile: StoryFile is rapidly evolving the media and storytelling landscape through its proprietary innovative technology, creating new ways to interact and communicate with each other and the world through user-led, voice activated interactive conversational video technology. StoryFile's mobile native cloud-based automatic AI-driven interactive conversational video platform creates an individualized and curated historical and living narrative. StoryFile leverages AI to enhance a natural conversation with the video captured on any device. StoryFile offers in-studio and remote legacy capture experiences, a beta-version of the StoryFile App on the app store, and [soon] a StoryFile Life version for users to create their personal full length StoryFiles using their own devices. To learn more, visit www.StoryFile.com.

About the American Heart Association : Children are the future in a world where cardiovascular diseases claim more lives each year than all forms of cancer combined. The American Heart Association is a relentless force dedicated to saving and improving every child's life. Its vision is that all children, regardless of gender, race, location or economic status, should be able grow to their full potential. The American Heart Association is laser-focused on enabling our children to build a world free from heart disease and stroke, working to improve environments where kids live, learn and play, and arming them with information, advocating for healthy environments and encouraging healthy habits. To learn more, visit www.heart.org.

About Red Sled Santa Foundation: For many years, the Red Sled Santa Foundation has made the holidays special for children. The Foundation provides programs, services, fun and educational holiday gifts, and essential needs for low income, special needs, medically challenged and terminally ill children so they experience a memorable and meaningful loving holiday. The Foundation accomplishes this mission through fundraising efforts, gifts from generous donors, and support from local merchants for our annual "Fill the Sleigh Toy Drive." To learn more, visit www.redsledfoundation.org .

Wipro's Annual State of Cybersecurity Report Finds Increasing Adoption of AI in Cybersecurity to Tackle Advanced Adversaries

Wipro Limited (NYSE: WIT, BSE: 507685, NSE: WIPRO), a leading global information technology, consulting and business process services company, today released its annual State of Cybersecurity Report (SOCR) that presents changing perspectives of cybersecurity globally.
 
The report provides fresh insights on how Artificial Intelligence (AI) will be leveraged as part of defender stratagems as more organizations lock horns with sophisticated cyberattacks and become more resilient. There has been an increase in R&D with 49% of the worldwide cybersecurity related patents filed in the last four years being focussed on AI and Machine Learning (ML) application. Nearly half the organisations are expanding cognitive detection capabilities to tackle unknown attacks in their Security Operations Center (SOC).
 
The report also illustrates a paradigm shift towards cyber resilience amid the rise in global remote work. It considers the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on cybersecurity landscape around the globe and provides a path for organizations to adapt with this new normal.
 
The fourth edition of the SOCR saw a global participation of 194 organizations and 21 partner academic, institutional and technology organizations over four months of research.
 
Additional highlights from State of Cybersecurity Report, include:
 
Global macro trends in cyber security

• Nation State Attacks Target Private Sector: 86% of all nation-state attacks fall under espionage category, and 46% of them are targeted towards private companies.

• Evolving threat patterns have emerged in the Consumer and Retail Sectors: 47% of suspicious social media profiles and domains were detected active in 2019 in these sectors.

 
Cyber Trends sparked by COVID-19 Global Pandemic

• Cyber Hygiene proven difficult during remote work enablement: 70% of the organizations faced challenges in maintaining endpoint cyber hygiene and 57% in mitigating Virtual Private Network (VPN) and Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) risks.

• Emerging post-COVID Cybersecurity priorities: 87% of the surveyed organizations are keen on implementing zero trust architecture and 87% are planning to scale up secure cloud migration.

 
Micro Trends: An inside-out enterprise view

• Low Confidence in Cyber Resilience: 59% of the organizations understand their cyber risks but only 23% of them are highly confident about preventing cyberattacks.

• Strong Cybersecurity spend due to Board Oversight & Regulations: 14% of organizations have a security budget of more than 12% of their overall IT budgets.

 
Micro Trends: Best Cyber practices to emulate

• Laying the foundation for a Cognitive SOC: 49% of organizations are adding cognitive detection capabilities to their SOC to tackle unknown attacks.

• Concerns about OT Infrastructure attacks increasing: 65% of organizations are performing log monitoring of Operation Technology (OT) and Internet of Things (IoT) devices as a control to mitigate increased OT Risks.

 
Meso Trends: An overview on Collaboration

• Fighting cyber-attacks demands stronger collaboration: 57% of organizations are willing to share only Indicators of Compromise (IoCs) and 64% consider reputational risks to be a barrier to information sharing.

• Cyber-attack simulation exercises serve as a strong wakeup call: 60% participate in cyber simulation exercises coordinated by Industry regulators, National Computer Emergency Response Team (CERTs) and third-party service providers and 79% organizations have dedicated cyber insurance policy in place.

 
Future of Cybersecurity

• 5G security is the emerging area for patent filing: 7% of the worldwide patents filed in the cyber domain in the last four years have been related to 5G security.

 
Vertical insights by industry

• Banking, Financial Services & Insurance: 70% of financial services enterprises said that new regulations are fuelling increase in security budgets, with 54% attributing higher budgets to board intervention.

• Communications: 71% of organizations consider cloud-hosting risk as a top risk.

• Consumer: 86% of consumer businesses said email phishing is a top risk and 75% enterprises said a bad cyber event will lead to damaged band reputation in the marketplace.

• Healthcare & Life Sciences: 83% of healthcare organizations have highlighted maintaining endpoint cyber hygiene as a challenge, 71% have highlighted that breaches reported by peers has led to increased security budget allocation.

• Energy, Natural Resources and Utilities: 71% organizations reported that OT/IT Integration would bring new risks.

• Manufacturing: 58% said that they are not confident about preventing risks from supply chain providers.

 
Bhanumurthy B.M, President and Chief Operating Officer, Wipro Limited said, “There is a significant shift in global trends like rapid innovation to mitigate evolving threats, strict data privacy regulations and rising concern about breaches. Security is ever changing and the report brings more focus, enablement, and accountability on executive management to stay updated. Our research not only focuses on what happened during the pandemic but also provides foresight toward future cyber strategies in a post-COVID world.”
 
To access the full report, click here.

IIT Roorkee Scientists Leveraged Artificial Intelligence to Predict FDA-approved Commercial Drugs to Tackle COVID-19

Roorkee, 12th November 2020: Amid the rapid transmission of COVID-19, a group of scientists from IIT Roorkee, led by Prof. Soumitra Satapathi have leveraged Artificial Intelligence (AI) to predict 10 FDI- approved commercial drugs available for the treatment of the disease. The study has been published in the prestigious journal PLOS One. The other co-authors of the study include Sovesh Mohapatra, Prathul Nath, Manisha Chatterjee, Neeladrisingha Das, Deepjyoti Kalita and Partha Roy.

The complexity in drug design and protocols regarding clinical trials often inhibit the process of developing various new drug combinations for the disease. IIT Roorkee scientists have successfully deployed Machine Learning-based-AI techniques to predict the commercial drugs that could be used for the treatment of COVID-19.

"Our study predicts around ten FDA approved commercial drugs that can be used for the treatment," says Prof. Satapathi, Principal Investigator and an Associate Professor of Physics in IIT Roorkee.

Many of the predicted drugs are already in use for the treatment of COVID-19, and some are in trials.

"Given the need of the present time, the present approach will save a lot of resources and time for synthesizing novel drugs and thus will be useful for a vast majority of the medical research community," Prof. Satapathi added.

The Machine Learning (ML) model based on the naive Bayes algorithm was used to predict the drugs that could be used for the treatment of COVID-19. The study shows that around ten FDA approved commercial drugs can be used for repurposing. Among all, it has also been found that the antiretroviral drug Amprenavir would probably be the most effective drug based on the selected criterions.

IIT Roorkee is an institute of national importance imparting higher education in engineering, sciences, management, architecture and planning, and humanities and social sciences. Since its establishment in 1847, the Institute has played a vital role in providing technical human resources and know-how to the country.

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NebulARC introduces AI-enabled Virtual Assistant to help enterprises take immediate actions based on predictive insights

New Delhi, November 3, 2020: NebulARC, one of India's fastest-growing logistics SaaS platform that enables enterprises to orchestrate their supply chain and gain real time visibility has introduced UBICUO, an AI-enabled Virtual Assistant for organisations helping them to take immediate actions based on detailed workflows, real-time alerts and analytics. The solution aims to help the companies to automate the entire supply chain and make supply chain management even more smarter.

With the growing need for effective logistics amidst rising customer demand for ecommerce and FMCG companies, it is becoming increasingly difficult to find apt manpower to manage the supply chain functions. Leveraging the AI-enabled virtual assistant is a smart option for companies working towards faster decision making and enhanced experience. Being an innovation-driven company, NebulARC's virtual assistant - UBICUO allows enterprises to keep a check on inventory, product perishability, supply trends, demand supply ratio etc. It is a cost effective solution that manages warehouse operations and follows up dispatched and stock in hand to inform the production requirements for smarter business decisions.

Within a short period of time, the company has carved a niche for itself in India's logistics SaaS market with its differentiated product offerings.

Talking about the solution, Mr. Alok Sharma, CEO & Co-founder, NebulARC said, "Certainly positive about the market sentiment, we are thrilled to introduce one of our most-disruptive logistics solutions for businesses across verticals. Our one-of-a kind virtual assistant - UBICUO has been developed keeping in mind the various constraints that a company faces while managing its logistics be it for B2B shipments or for end-customers. With its unique capabilities, UBICUO will prove to be a key enabler for organisations by helping them to increase their productivity and optimise their operations at a significantly lesser cost. With this resource-saving project we are making yet another substantial effort towards accelerating digital transformation in the logistics space."


NebulARC's AI-enabled Virtual Assistant not only manages the entire logistics ecosystem but also helps the businesses to significantly reduce risks of theft, pilferage and other unwanted events such as temperature excursions by providing intelligent alerts and actionable insights.

Thales Launches Its Identity Verification Suite, a Secure Biometric Solution for Customer Onboarding

 

• Thales’s Gemalto Identity Verification Suite (IDV) minimizes ID fraud risks by verifying document authenticity so that service providers can digitally check identities of new customers.
• IDV is designed to onboard more users in a secure remote environment, offering a smooth user experience.
• The 100% automated solution leveraging Thales Artificial Intelligence, guarantees user privacy, high-level security and deployment flexibility.

Thales, world leader in digital security, has launched its Identity Verification Suite, in response to the rising need of remote client onboarding. With privacy and user experience as its heart, the IDV Suite enables a secure and 100%-AI identity verification service. It integrates the latest facial recognition technology, document security features recognition and machine learning engines. The solution addresses the Covid-19 environment with touchless interactions, allowing service providers to reach end users via their mobile handsets or the web.

 

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20201029005392/en/

 

(Photo: Thales)

Secure identity verification has become a crucial part of online security and digital onboarding, and constitutes a significant opportunity for businesses. In cases such as digital enrolment or KYC (Know Your Customer) regulations, ID verification is critical in order to efficiently detect fraud and therefore build user trust in the digital world.

 

The IDV Suite designed by Thales allows a secure and smooth user journey for markets from the travel industry (airlines and airport security, car rental companies, public and private transportation), telecom operators, banks, citizen services (International Driving Permit), and all types of online service providers looking to meet their KYC needs. To ease the deployment of the solution, Thales provides flexible onboarding options including a highly secure connection to Thales IDV server in SaaS (Solution as a service) mode.

 

The modular solution offers flexibility to deploy a single solution across all channels, whether through mobile applications, websites, or a network of dedicated document scanners, thus aligning with the security expectations of each industry. From checking the validity of the Machine-Readable Zone (MRZ) of an ID document to more advanced control under white light, infra-red and UV checks, the suite can also securely perform contactless NFC verification using the chip of e-documents.

 

Advanced facial biometric technology is also a key feature in the IDV Suite, integrating passive liveness detection to facilitate end-user experience. The customer is asked to take a selfie, and then the solution transparently analyzes the liveness of the selfie and securely matches it against the portrait on the ID document, allowing for quick and efficient identity biometric verification.

 

“COVID-19 has created a number of key global shifts that are shaping the method in which people are accurately identified when signing up to new accounts or interacting with digital services. Goode Intelligence forecasts that electronic identity and document verification service adoption, in such crisis context, will be accelerated by 15-20 percent,” said Alan Goode, CEO & Chief Analyst at Goode Intelligence. “Thales IDV suite addresses the urgent imperative to identify people in a trustful and ‘touchless’ way which offers service providers a smart solution to securely onboard users”. 

About Thales 

Thales (Euronext Paris: HO) is a global high technology leader investing in digital and “deep tech” innovations –connectivity, big data, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity and quantum technology – to build a future we can all trust, which is vital to the development of our societies. The company provides solutions, services and products that help its customers –businesses, organisations and states – in the defence, aeronautics, space, transportation and digital identity and security markets to fulfil their critical missions, by placing humans at the heart of the decision-making process. 

With 83,000 employees in 68 countries, Thales generated sales of €19 billion in 2019 (on a basis including Gemalto over 12 months)

 

Wipro and IBM strengthen relationship; announce the expansion of IBM Hybrid Cloud Practice

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Business Wire India

Wipro Limited (NYSE: WIT, BSE: 507685, NSE: WIPRO), a leading global information technology, consulting and business process services company, today announced its intention to expand its IBM Hybrid Cloud Practice. Supported by technical experts from both organizations, the practice is expected to help Wipro customers modernize their digital operations across hybrid cloud environments by leveraging IBM Cloud Paks, containerized software running on Red Hat OpenShift.
 
Wipro’s IBM Hybrid Cloud Practice unit will help customers innovate at scale by leveraging industry-ready Wipro solutions such as BoundaryLess Enterprise (BLE) and ModernizR. Both of these solutions were built with IBM Cloud Paks on Red Hat OpenShift and can run in any cloud environment, including the IBM public cloud.

• BoundaryLess Enterprise (BLE) is a hybrid cloud management platform that offers a comprehensive array of technologies in a single environment that enables customers to run their cloud-native applications from anywhere. BLE leverages IBM’s open hybrid cloud capabilities to support containers, IaaS, and PaaS computing models that can help enterprises accelerate their transformation journey to the cloud. 
   
• ModernizR is a software-based solution built with IBM Cloud Pak for Applications, a key technology in Wipro’s cloud migration and operations portfolio. The solution is designed to help enterprises move their legacy applications to the cloud by leveraging artificial intelligence to mine and analyze customer’s legacy applications and data. The resulting insights can be used to assess risk and recommend a migration strategy that includes employing automation to help software developers re-engineer the application. 

Bhanumurthy B.M, President and Chief Operating Officer, Wipro Limited said, “Wipro empowers customers across industries to re-imagine their cloud journey with its business-first strategy and industrialized solutions approach. We believe the future will be driven by hybrid cloud hence, the expansion of IBM Hybrid cloud practice is intrinsic to our strategy. It will strengthen our relationship with IBM and help accelerate our clients’ transformation journey across hybrid cloud environments.”
 
Bob Lord, Senior Vice President, Cognitive Applications and Ecosystems, IBM said, “The expansion of our relationship with Wipro reinforces our joint commitment to help clients accelerate their journey to cloud across industries, including highly regulated sectors such as financial services, energy and utilities, manufacturing and healthcare. Wipro’s industry knowledge, combined with IBM’s hybrid cloud and AI platform powered by Red Hat OpenShift, can help enterprises drive real business transformation by migrating and managing their critical workloads across an open hybrid cloud environment.”

Wipro is part of IBM’s hybrid cloud ecosystem, an initiative to support global system integrators and independent software vendors to help clients modernize workloads with Red Hat OpenShift for any cloud environment, including the IBM public cloud. Red Hat OpenShift is the industry's leading enterprise Kubernetes platform. The IBM public cloud is the industry's most secure and open public cloud for business. With its security leadership, enterprise-grade capabilities and support for open source technologies, the IBM public cloud is designed to differentiate and extend on hybrid cloud capabilities for enterprise workloads. 
 
Wipro recently announced a 5G edge services solution suite that integrates IBM Edge Application Manager and TRIRIGA to address a range of concerns related to deploying and managing distributed services on devices, private edges and telecom operator’s Multi-Access Edges globally. The company received the IBM Beacon Award for Best IBM Hybrid Multi Cloud Practice at IBM PartnerWorld 2020.
 
Red Hat and OpenShift are trademarks or registered trademarks of Red Hat, Inc. or its subsidiaries in the U.S. and other countries.

Eagle Eye Networks Raises $40 Million to Transform Video Surveillance by Combining Cloud and AI

Eagle Eye Networks, the global leader in cloud video surveillance, has raised $40 million of Series E funding from venture capital firm Accel (Facebook, Spotify, DocuSign) to continue its growth and expand its technology leadership. Eagle Eye is leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) on its true cloud platform to dramatically reshape video surveillance and improve safety, security, operations, and customer service for businesses around the world. 

Today’s video surveillance systems have multiple security features, such as motion detection and standard analytics. However, these systems require either monotonous monitoring or a meticulous manual review after each triggered event to extract useful information. Similarly, business operations analytics are still in early development.

“There is a tremendous opportunity to leverage AI and alter the very nature of video surveillance,” said Dean Drako, Founder and CEO of Eagle Eye Networks. “Eagle Eye Networks now has the means and the technology to enable cloud video surveillance to transform how companies manage security and business operations, in the same way self-driving and electric cars are transforming transportation.

“Ultimately, smart cloud video surveillance with appropriate privacy and cybersecurity protections will make business and communities much safer, for example: detecting dangers such as weapons, erratic driving, active robberies, and traffic accidents. Furthermore,” continued Drako, “businesses will analyze their customer service and retail operations to provide a significantly better customer experience, and manufacturers will provide higher quality products, in a safer and more timely manner with video AI.”

Sameer Gandhi, Partner at Accel, added, “Eagle Eye Networks pioneered the video surveillance industry’s move to the cloud, and AI applications will drive the industry’s next transformation. Eagle Eye is in the pole position to make this happen. Its true cloud technology puts Eagle Eye in a unique position to instantly deploy new analytics breakthroughs. Dean Drako’s track record, proven with Eagle Eye and previously as founder of Barracuda Networks, speaks for itself.”

Eagle Eye Networks Cloud VMS

The Eagle Eye Cloud Video Management System (VMS) is a smart cloud video surveillance solution, purpose-built to help businesses improve safety, security, operations, and customer service while saving money. Tens of thousands of companies in more than 90 countries around the globe have moved their video surveillance to the cloud with Eagle Eye VMS. Customers, including multi-family residences, smart cities, schools, hospitals, hotels, logistics, restaurants, and retail shops trust Eagle Eye for actionable business intelligence and proactive security.

Eagle Eye Cloud VMS offers comprehensive central management, cloud reliability and redundancy, cost savings, and an open API video platform that provides a vast number of third-party integrations. Customers appreciate Eagle Eye’s inherent cyber secure design and extensive video encryption to protect their data and privacy. The Eagle Eye Cloud VMS works with thousands of industry cameras and does not require customers to “rip and replace” their existing infrastructure.

Eagle Eye Networks, together with its partner Brivo, provide a seamless solution for cloud video surveillance and facility access control. Brivo is the worldwide leader in cloud facility access control. The Eagle Eye API allows for seamless integration with partners like Brivo and others making Eagle Eye Cloud VMS the only platform robust enough to power the future of video surveillance.

“In more than two decades in the video surveillance industry, I have heard people talk about revolutionizing the market and taking it to the next level, but only Eagle Eye Networks has truly delivered on that promise,” added John E. Mack III, Executive Vice President, Co-Head of Investment Banking at Imperial Capital. “While Eagle Eye Networks vision as the first cloud native solution was compelling previously, the changes 2020 brought about through business disruption related to COVID-19 make Eagle Eye’s products and services even more desirable. Eagle Eye’s focus on the customer and commitment to innovation create a foundation that makes its cloud and AI enhanced offerings for video surveillance a focus for security specific executives and the C-suite alike.”

ABOUT EAGLE EYE NETWORKS

Founded in 2012, Eagle Eye Networks, Inc., is #1 in cloud video surveillance worldwide, addressing the needs of businesses, alarm companies, security integrators, cities, and individuals. Eagle Eye’s 100% cloud managed solutions provide cloud and on-premise recording, bank-level security and encryption, and broad analog and digital camera support – all accessed via the web or mobile applications. Businesses of all sizes and types utilize Eagle Eye solutions for operational optimization and security. All Eagle Eye products benefit from Eagle Eye’s developer friendly RESTful API platform and Big Data Video Framework ™, which allow for indexing, search, retrieval, and analysis of live and archived video. Eagle Eye’s open Video API has been widely adopted for integration in alarm monitoring, third party analytics, security dashboards, and point of sale system integrations.

Eagle Eye sells its products through authorized global resellers and installation partners. Headquartered in Austin, Texas, USA, Eagle Eye has offices in Europe and Asia-Pacific. 

ABOUT ACCEL

Accel is a global venture capital firm that is the first partner to exceptional teams everywhere, from inception through all phases of private company growth. Atlassian, Braintree, Cloudera, Crowdstrike, DJI, DocuSign, Dropbox, Etsy, Facebook, Flipkart, Freshworks, Jet, Pillpack, Qualtrics, Slack, Spotify, Supercell, Tenable, UiPath, and Venmo are among the companies Accel has backed over the past 35+ years. We help ambitious entrepreneurs build iconic global businesses. For more, visit www.accel.com or www.twitter.com/accel.

Wipro Strengthens Partnership With SAP on Industry Cloud Solutions for Real Estate Sector

Wipro Limited (NYSE: WIT, BSE: 507685, NSE: WIPRO), a leading global information technology, consulting and business process services company, today announced that it will co-innovate with SAP SE on cloud-based solutions for the real estate industry.

Building on the Intelligent Enterprise strategy, SAP is expanding its vertical solutions to fill the whitespace in its portfolio with an ecosystem of industry cloud applications that leverage SAP® Cloud Platform with advanced technologies, and are interoperable with SAP Business Network and the intelligent suite. Partners are an integral part of SAP’s Intelligent Enterprise strategy and Wipro is contributing their industry insights and knowledge in the development of purpose-built solutions for the real estate industry.

To start with, Wipro has launched the Tenant Acquisition Management (TAM) solution for the real estate industry. Anchored with intelligent technologies like robotic process automation, artificial intelligence and machine learning, the TAM solution enables faster deal conversion with respect to tenant leasing by providing a seamless, real time and consistent experience for leasing agents to perform ‘Lead to Lease’ activities. It can be integrated as a cloud extension to SAP Customer Experience and SAP S/4HANA® software as well. Further, the solution also leverages Wipro’s preconfigured industry solution for real estate to accelerate SAP S/4HANA® deployments and manage end-to-end real estate business processes.

Srinivas Sai Nidadhavolu, Vice President and Global Practice Head - SAP Services, Wipro Limited said, “Wipro and SAP’s collaboration will spur innovation to help customers solve real world business challenges. This initiative will help real estate businesses to constantly innovate and differentiate themselves in the marketplace. We will continue designing new solutions for other industries as well.”

Johnny Clemmons, Head of the SAP Engineering, Construction and Operations Industry Business Unit said, “The TAM solution developed by Wipro fills critical whitespace in our portfolio and enables a more seamless lead-to-lease process for our customers. This is a perfect example of how co-innovation between our organizations can deliver value for our joint customers. We look forward to jointly solving more business problems for our real estate customers with additional industry cloud solutions.”

Wipro’s TAM solution is an SAP-validated partner app available on SAP App Center, the digital marketplace for SAP partner offerings. Find, try, and buy Wipro’s TAM solution at www.sapappcenter.com. For each purchase made on SAP App Center, SAP will plant a tree.

Pulse Electronics Switches to Rimini Street Support for its SAP Applications

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Business Wire India

Rimini Street, Inc. (Nasdaq: RMNI), a global provider of enterprise software products and services, the leading third-party support provider for Oracle and SAP software products and a Salesforce partner, today announced that Pulse Electronics, a leading components manufacturer for the automotive and telecommunications industries, has switched to Rimini Street support for its SAP ECC 6.0 and Business Objects software. With the savings achieved by switching support providers, Pulse was able to divert its liberated funding to invest in business intelligence (BI) capabilities including artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to enable growth and competitive advantage during a year when new spending may not have otherwise been possible. The company was also able to defer an expensive forced migration to S/4HANA, required to remain in full support with the vendor, and instead has taken complete control of its IT roadmap to support the businesses’ objectives versus the vendor’s dictated roadmap.

 

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Pulse Electronics Switches to Rimini Street Support for its SAP Applications (Photo: Business Wire)

Budget Balancing Act – Reduce IT Operations Expense and Increase Funding for Innovation

 

Pulse Electronics based in San Diego, is part of Taiwanese parent company Yageo. The company designs and manufactures a wide range of components for various industries, with more than 70 percent of its products designed in collaboration with customers. Pulse uses its SAP system for several critical functions including finance, operations, supply chain and warehouse management. As its business operations are required to run 24/7, any interruption to its operations would mean a major loss of revenue. In order to sustain its leadership in a highly competitive market, the company must adapt quickly to changing market dynamics. For Pulse’s global IT director, Alan Wong, adapting quickly means having the time and resources available to pursue innovations that drive business growth and make it possible to navigate this fast-paced market.

 

Wong divides his IT budget into three tiers – day-to-day business operations, business growth and innovation. With a need to invest more in innovation, Wong began to investigate expenditures in the business operations tier and discovered that its SAP application support costs, including related upgrade costs and additional add-on fees, were consuming a significant portion of the IT budget. This was identified as a low-return expenditure to address as quickly as possible.

 

“It became evident that to sufficiently fund our innovation initiatives, including adding business intelligence capabilities, we needed to take a completely different approach and immediately release some funding from one of our budget tiers,” said Wong. “We considered moving off SAP’s support to self-support the system internally, but this was simply not practical. All of these reasons pointed us in the direction of third-party support, and we couldn’t be happier with our decision to move to Rimini Street.”

 

By switching to Rimini Street Support, Wong was able to free up funds from his day-to-day operations budget specifically allocated to SAP support and maintenance, and instead divert this funding to BI and AI technologies to strengthen the cognitive and intelligence capabilities of their ERP platform, including sales-related predictive analysis to derive insights that help support the businesses objectives in an increasingly competitive market.

 

“Macro-disruption due to the global pandemic may have slowed our progress but investing in innovation is still very much in reach thanks to switching to Rimini Street,” continued Wong.

 

Superior Support Capabilities with a Compelling Financial Benefit

 

Once Pulse made the move to Rimini Street, the organization immediately experienced a superior level of support that they had not previously experienced with the vendor. This included receiving a smooth onboarding and archiving process, support for its SAP software customizations at no additional cost, and an ultra-responsive service with highly experienced engineers.

 

As with all Rimini Street clients, Pulse benefits from the Company’s flexible, premium-level enterprise software support model, including its industry-leading Service Level Agreement (SLA) of 10-minute response times for all critical Priority 1 cases. Clients are also assigned a Primary Support Engineer, backed by a team of functional and technical experts, who have an average of 15 years’ experience in the client’s software system.

 

“We are pleased that we are able to help businesses such as Pulse Electronics reduce their costs and optimize budgets to enable them to invest those savings into innovation initiatives that aid in business growth, especially during times of economic uncertainty as we are experiencing today,” said Andrew Seow, regional general manager, Southeast Asia and Greater China, Rimini Street. “Increasingly companies across South East Asia, Greater China and around the world, are turning to Rimini Street for support of their enterprise software systems to receive a higher quality of support and reduce costs, giving them the peace of mind and resources to focus on their most pressing business initiatives.”

 

About Rimini Street, Inc.

 

Rimini Street, Inc. (Nasdaq: RMNI) is a global provider of enterprise software products and services, the leading third-party support provider for Oracle and SAP software products and a Salesforce partner. The Company offers premium, ultra-responsive and integrated application management and support services that enable enterprise software licensees to save significant costs, free up resources for innovation and achieve better business outcomes. To date, more than 3,500 Fortune 500, Fortune Global 100, midmarket, public sector and other organizations from a broad range of industries have relied on Rimini Street as their trusted application enterprise software products and services provider. To learn more, please visit http://www.riministreet.com, follow @riministreet on Twitter and find Rimini Street on Facebook and LinkedIn.

 

Forward-Looking Statements

 

Certain statements included in this communication are not historical facts but are forward-looking statements for purposes of the safe harbor provisions under The Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements generally are accompanied by words such as “may,” “should,” “would,” “plan,” “intend,” “anticipate,” “believe,” “estimate,” “predict,” “potential,” “seem,” “seek,” “continue,” “future,” “will,” “expect,” “outlook” or other similar words, phrases or expressions. These statements are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties regarding Rimini Street’s business, and actual results may differ materially. These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, the duration of and economic, operational and financial impacts on Rimini Street’s business of the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the actions taken by governmental authorities, clients or others in response to the COVID-19 pandemic; catastrophic events that disrupt Rimini Street’s business or that of its current and prospective clients, changes in the business environment in which Rimini Street operates, including inflation and interest rates, and general financial, economic, regulatory and political conditions affecting the industry in which Rimini Street operates; adverse developments in pending litigation or in the government inquiry or any new litigation; Rimini Street’s need and ability to raise additional equity or debt financing on favorable terms and Rimini Street’s ability to generate cash flows from operations to help fund increased investment in Rimini Street’s growth initiatives; the sufficiency of Rimini Street’s cash and cash equivalents to meet its liquidity requirements; the terms and impact of Rimini Street’s outstanding 13.00% Series A Preferred Stock; changes in taxes, laws and regulations; competitive product and pricing activity; difficulties of managing growth profitably; the customer adoption of Rimini Street’s recently introduced products and services, including its Application Management Services (AMS), Rimini Street Advanced Database Security, and services for Salesforce Sales Cloud and Service Cloud products, in addition to other products and services Rimini Street expects to introduce in the near future; the loss of one or more members of Rimini Street’s management team; uncertainty as to the long-term value of Rimini Street’s equity securities; and those risks discussed under the heading “Risk Factors” in Rimini Street’s Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q filed on August 5, 2020 and as updated from time to time by other filings by Rimini Street with the Securities and Exchange Commission. In addition, forward-looking statements provide Rimini Street’s expectations, plans or forecasts of future events and views as of the date of this communication. Rimini Street anticipates that subsequent events and developments will cause Rimini Street’s assessments to change. However, while Rimini Street may elect to update these forward-looking statements at some point in the future, Rimini Street specifically disclaims any obligation to do so, except as required by law. These forward-looking statements should not be relied upon as representing Rimini Street’s assessments as of any date subsequent to the date of this communication.

 

© 2020 Rimini Street, Inc. All rights reserved. “Rimini Street” is a registered trademark of Rimini Street, Inc. in the United States and other countries, and Rimini Street, the Rimini Street logo, and combinations thereof, and other marks marked by TM are trademarks of Rimini Street, Inc. All other trademarks remain the property of their respective owners, and unless otherwise specified, Rimini Street claims no affiliation, endorsement, or association with any such trademark holder or other companies referenced herein.

 

 

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C3.ai, Microsoft, and Adobe Combine Forces to Re-invent CRM with AI

C3 AI CRM enables a new category of customer-focused industry AI use cases and a new ecosystem
C3.ai, Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ:MSFT), and Adobe Inc. (NASDAQ:ADBE) today announced the launch of C3 AI® CRM powered by Microsoft Dynamics 365. The first enterprise-class, AI-first customer relationship management solution is purpose-built for industries, integrates with Adobe Experience Cloud, and drives customer-facing operations with predictive business insights.

• Integrate Microsoft Dynamics 365, Adobe Experience Cloud (including Adobe Experience Platform), and C3.ai’s industry-specific data models, connectors, and AI models, in a joint go-to-market offering designed to provide an integrated suite of industry-specific AI-enabled CRM solutions including marketing, sales, and customer service.
• Sell the industry-specific AI CRM offering through dedicated sales teams to target enterprise accounts across multiple industries globally, as well as through agents and industry partners.
• Target industry vertical markets initially including financial services, oil and gas, utilities, manufacturing, telecommunications, public sector, healthcare, defense, intelligence, automotive, and aerospace.
• Market the jointly branded offering globally, supported by the companies' commitment to customer success.

“Microsoft, Adobe, and C3.ai are reinventing a market that Siebel Systems invented more than 25 years ago,” said Thomas M. Siebel, CEO of C3.ai. “The dynamics of the market and the mandates of digital transformation have dramatically changed CRM market requirements. A general-purpose CRM system of record is no longer sufficient. Customers today demand industry-specific, fully AI-enabled solutions that provide AI-enabled revenue forecasting, product forecasting, customer churn, next-best product, next-best offer, and predisposition to buy.”

“This year has made clear that businesses fortified by digital technology are more resilient and more capable of transforming when faced with sweeping changes like those we are experiencing,” said Satya Nadella, CEO, Microsoft. “Together with C3.ai and Adobe, we are bringing to market a new class of industry-specific AI solutions, powered by Dynamics 365, to help organizations digitize their operations and unlock real-time insights across their business.”

“We’re proud to partner with C3.ai and Microsoft to advance the imperative for digital customer engagement,” said Shantanu Narayen, president and CEO of Adobe. “The unique combination of Adobe Experience Cloud, the industry-leading solution for customer experiences, together with the C3 AI Suite and Microsoft Dynamics 365, will enable brands to deliver rich experiences that drive business growth.”

“This is an exciting development in the advancement of Enterprise AI,” said Lorenzo Simonelli, chairman and CEO of Baker Hughes. “This partnership between C3.ai, Microsoft, and Adobe will bring a unique and powerful new CRM offering to the market. We are adopting AI in multiple applications internally and in new products and services for our customers through our C3.ai partnership. We look forward to offering C3 AI CRM to our customers and benefitting from the capabilities internally.”

Combining the market-leading Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM software with Adobe’s leading suite of customer experience management solutions alongside C3.ai’s enterprise AI capabilities, C3 AI CRM is the world’s first AI-driven, industry-specific CRM built with a modern AI-first architecture. C3 AI CRM integrates and unifies vast amounts of structured and unstructured data from enterprise and extraprise sources into a unified, federated image to drive real-time predictive insights across the entire revenue supply chain, from contact to cash. With embedded AI-driven, industry-specific workflows, C3 AI CRM helps teams: 

• Accurately forecast revenue
• Accurately predict product demand
• Identify and reduce customer churn
• Identify highly-qualified prospects
• Next-best offer, next-best product
• AI-driven segmentation, marketing, and targeting

C3 AI CRM enables brands to take advantage of their real-time customer profiles for cross-channel journey orchestration. The joint solution offers an integrated ecosystem that empowers customers to take advantage of leading CRM capabilities along with an integrated ecosystem with Azure, Microsoft 365, and the Microsoft Power Platform. C3 AI CRM is pre-built and configured for industries – financial services, healthcare, telecommunications, oil and gas, manufacturing, utilities, aerospace, automotive, public sector, defense, and intelligence – enabling customers to deploy and operate C3 AI CRM and its industry-specific machine learning models quickly. In addition, C3 AI CRM leverages the common data model of the Open Data Initiative (ODI), making it easier to bring together disparate customer data from across the enterprise.

C3 AI CRM is immediately available, with Adobe Experience Cloud sold separately. C3 AI CRM powered by Dynamics 365 will be available from C3.ai, Adobe, Microsoft and through the Microsoft Dynamics 365 Marketplace. Please contact sales@c3.ai to learn more.

About C3.ai

C3.ai is a leading enterprise AI software provider for accelerating digital transformation. C3.ai delivers the C3 AI Suite for developing, deploying, and operating large-scale AI, predictive analytics, and IoT applications in addition to an increasingly broad portfolio of turn-key AI applications. The core of the C3.ai offering is a revolutionary, model-driven AI architecture that dramatically enhances data science and application development.

About Microsoft

Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT” @microsoft) enables digital transformation for the era of an intelligent cloud and an intelligent edge. Its mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.

About Adobe

Adobe is changing the world through digital experiences. For more information, visit www.adobe.com.

US-based Satellite Analytics Firm AiDash Secures $6 Mn in Funding led by Benhamou Global Ventures and National Grid Partners

Funding accelerates AiDash towards rapid global expansion as it empowers utility and energy industries with satellite-powered operations & maintenance

AiDash, a San Francisco Bay Area-based leading satellite analytics company, today announced that it has raised $6 million in a Series A funding round led by Benhamou Global Ventures (BGV) and National Grid Partners (NGP). At a time when wildfires, hurricanes, pipeline leaks and power outages have proved catastrophic to the utility and energy industries, AiDash is helping them mitigate these problems and be resilient using satellite data and AI at scale. The funding will be used to boost product innovation, hire new talent and further plans for global expansion. 

AiDash uses high-resolution multispectral satellite imagery coupled with Artificial Intelligence to transform operations and maintenance (O&M) activities like Vegetation Management, Remote Monitoring & Survey and Disaster and Disruptions Management for global utility and energy customers. The company is already working with several Fortune 500 utilities in the United States and is set to expand its operations in Europe, Australia and Asia.

“As wildfires, hurricanes and COVID-19 pose new challenges to the utility and energy industries, they’re looking for innovative technologies to transform their O&M activities. At a time when drones and LiDAR have failed to yield results, satellite technology is breaking new ground. AiDash’s Intelligent Vegetation Management System is the world’s only satellite-powered vegetation management system deployed at scale for large utilities,” said AiDash CEO and co-founder Abhishek Vinod Singh. “The funding will allow us to boost deployment of satellite analytics as the technology of choice for automated operations & maintenance,” he added.

Yashwanth Hemaraj, Partner at BGV, and Andre Turenne, Director at NGP, will join the Board at AiDash.

AiDash co-founders Abhishek Vinod Singh, Rahul Saxena and Nitin Das are serial entrepreneurs with successful exits and experience running Tier-1 VC-funded companies. All of them are alumni of prestigious IITs and they bring with them deep experience in the fields of engineering, data science and business.

Investor Perspectives

“At National Grid Partners, our objective is to revolutionize the energy sector using emerging technology, and AiDash with its satellite analytics platform brackets it perfectly. We’re delighted to come together and pool interests with AiDash to create a smarter and future-ready industry today,” Lisa Lambert, Founder and President of National Grid Partners said.

“BGV’s investment thesis focuses exclusively on Enterprise 4.0 startups, a new wave of cloud-native ventures that combine artificial intelligence, intelligent automation and proprietary access to data to deliver actionable insights for enterprise businesses. AiDash clearly falls into that camp. Their AI models leverage satellite data to deliver millions of dollars of savings for utility companies through intelligent vegetation management applications. We believe they are particularly well-positioned to arm other core industries that have geographically dispersed critical assets with data-driven insights, improving system reliability and transforming operations,” said Yashwanth Hemaraj, Partner at BGV.

About AiDash

AiDash is an AI-first vertical SaaS company enabling satellite-powered operations and maintenance for utility, energy, and other core industries with geographically distributed assets. AiDash uses high-resolution, multispectral and SAR data from the world’s leading satellite constellations that are fed into its proprietary AI models to make timely predictions for O&M activities. These AI models empower AiDash’s full-stack applications and enable efficient planning, prioritization, execution, review and audit of O&M activities using satellite analytics. Visit aidash.com.

About Benhamou Global Ventures

BGV is an early-stage venture capital firm focused on Enterprise 4.0 technology innovation. The partners at BGV drove successive waves of enterprise technology disruption in Silicon Valley and have over 300 years of combined operational experience. The firm adopts a global outlook, sourcing companies from innovation hubs around the world, and invests in cross-border ventures anchored in Silicon Valley. BGV has offices in Palo Alto, California and Tel Aviv, Israel and maintains a presence in France and India. Visit bgv.vc.

About National Grid Partners

National Grid Partners (NGP) is the venture investment and innovation arm of National Grid plc., one of the largest investor-owned energy companies in the world. NGP invests for strategic and financial impact and leads companywide culture transformation efforts. The organization provides a multi-functional approach to building startups, including innovation (new business creation), incubation, corporate venture capital, business development and culture acceleration. NGP is headquartered in Silicon Valley and has offices in Boston, London, and New York.