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Optimal Dynamics Raises $4 Million in Seed Funding
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Welcome back. Today, we look at Optimal Dynamics, which just raised $4 million in a seed round. The startup’s AI software is designed to help shipping and trucking companies run their businesses and anticipate their future needs.
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Trucks in France on April 29, 2020. Optimal Dynamics helps shipping and trucking companies manage and automate their operations. PHOTO: ABD RABBO AMMAR/ZUMA PRESS
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Newsletter Exclusive: Optimal Dynamics raises $4 million. Optimal Dynamics Inc., an artificial-intelligence software startup, Tuesday said it raised $4 million in seed funding, WSJ Pro reports.
The Long Island City, N.Y.-based company helps shipping and trucking companies manage and automate their operations.
Fusion Fund led the funding with participation from the Westly Group, TenOneTen Ventures, Embark Ventures, FitzGate Ventures and Newark Venture Partners.
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System helps companies make long-term plans. The company said its Core.ai subscription-based software uses AI techniques including machine learning, which analyzes patterns. The system can match drivers and trucks to freight loads and destinations, Optimal Dynamics said.
The software also can simulate a company’s operations and help it make longer-term business decisions, such as driver recruitment and equipment purchases.
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“The idea of Optimal Dynamics is to be a decision layer,” said Daniel Powell, the AI startup company’s co-founder and chief executive officer, “allowing people to plan further into the future, allowing them to make better decisions.”
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Mr. Powell said Optimal Dynamics has a handful of customers, including a large shipping company, which he declined to identify.
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Employers in June posted more than 260,000 job ads for IT workers, led by software developers, IT support specialists and systems engineers, IT trade group CompTIA said.
PHOTO: DAMIR SAGOLJ/REUTERS
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U.S. adds more than 200,000 IT workers in June. U.S. employers added more than 200,000 information-technology workers in June, the sharpest pace of growth since hiring was derailed by the Covid-19 outbreak, The Wall Street Journal’s Angus Loten reports, citing data from IT trade group CompTIA
Despite the gains, continued layoffs in the technology sector kept the unemployment rate for IT workers across the economy unchanged at 4.3%, the group said.
The results are based on an analysis of last week’s nationwide Labor Department data, which reported 4.8 million new jobs being added in June, lowering the unemployment rate to 11.1% from 13.3% in May. Employment data for June was collected before a surge in new coronavirus cases toward the end of the month, which may stall business reopenings and curb hiring plans, analysts said.
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German official says EU may need AI regulator. German Justice Minister Christine Lambrecht said the European Union may need an AI regulatory agency to strengthen people’s trust in the technology and allow it to reach its economic potential, Bloomberg reports.
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Palantir files to go public. Palantir Technologies Inc. said it has confidentially filed paperwork with the Securities and Exchange Commission to go public, ending an extended wait that made the data analytics company one of Silicon Valley’s oldest private startups, The Wall Street Journal’s Rob Copeland reports.
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The stand taken by several U.S. tech giants against China’s national-security law in Hong Kong brings into the open concerns many foreign companies in the city are discussing internally but executives dare not talk about publicly for fear of getting dragged into the political fray. (WSJ)
Civil-rights advocates came out of a meeting Tuesday with Facebook Inc. Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg saying they didn’t make progress on their demands over how the social-media giant polices the platform. (WSJ)
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