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Clari Raises $60 Million in New Funding; MIT to Review SenseTime Ties; Venture Deals at Record Pace
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Andy Byrne, Clari’s chief executive and co-founder. PHOTO: CLARI INC.
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Clari raises $60 million in new funding. Clari Inc., a provider of an artificial-intelligence-based sales and marketing platform, said Thursday it raised an additional $60 million in venture-capital funding to bring its total to $135 million, WSJ Pro reports.
The Sunnyvale, Calif., software company developed a machine-learning system, also named Clari, that allows businesses to better forecast and manage their sales and marketing. Andy Byrne, its chief executive and co-founder, said the company has more than 250 customers, including Adobe, Audi and Okta Inc.
Sapphire Ventures led the funding round with participation from new investor Madrona Venture Group and existing backers Sequoia Capital, Bain Capital Ventures and Tenaya Capital.
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How Clari works. The platform links up with a corporation’s customer-relationship-management software, calendar system, marketing-automation platform, email and other sources. It aggregates sales-related data, such as pending or closed sales, marketing-campaign statistics, customer contacts and other information. Clari’s AI then analyzes the data to make revenue projections and identify areas where sales might be at risk or where a customer might be open to making additional purchases.
Clari’s customers use those insights to, among other things, focus sales resources on closing a pending order or pitching extra products to a customer.
“[Our] thesis was that AI would transform revenue operations for every company on the planet,” Mr. Byrne said.
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MIT to review relationship with SenseTime. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology will review its relationship with AI startup SenseTime Group, which was listed among the Chinese companies blacklisted by the U.S. over alleged human rights, reports Bloomberg.
The relationship between the school and the startup was described last year by MIT as an effort to “confront some of the world’s greatest challenges” according to the report.
What MIT is saying. “MIT has long had a robust export controls function that pays careful attention to export control regulations and compliance,” a spokeswoman for the school wrote in an email, according to Bloomberg. “MIT will review all existing relationships with organisations added to the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Entity List, and modify any interactions, as necessary.”
The company, a developer of facial-recognition technology was co-founded by MIT graduate Tang Xiao’ou.
A statement from a SenseTime spokeswoman said the company was “deeply disappointed” by the Commerce Department’s decision and that the company “will work closely with all relevant authorities to fully understand and resolve the situation,” according to Bloomberg.
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AI funding set to hit record. Artificial intelligence startups are on a pace to set a new funding record, reports VentureBeat. Through the first nine months of the year, 965 AI-related companies in the U.S. raised $13.5 billion in venture funding, according to third-quarter 2019 data from the National Venture Capital Association. And activity appears to have increased in September, according to the report.
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California Gov. Gavin Newsom listens to a question during an interview in Sacramento, Calif., on Oct. 8, 2019. PHOTO: RICH PEDRONCELLI/ASSOCIATED PRESS
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California bans police use of facial recognition in body cams. California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill prohibiting police in the state from using facial recognition technology in body cameras, reports the San Francisco Chronicle. The law will take effect January 1. No police departments in the state currently use the technology, according to the California Peace Officers’ Association, although some have looked into it, according to the report.
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Facial recognition deployed at New York's JFK. Lufthansa has deployed a biometric self-boarding process, which uses facial recognition, at a gate in John F. Kennedy International Airport’s Terminal 1, reports the New York Post. Officials said Air France, Japan Airlines and Norwegian Airlines are expected to also implement the technology, according to the report. And last year JetBlue installed a biometric self-boarding gate at JFK’s Terminal 5 for travelers heading to certain international destinations
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Taste trends. McCormick, Conagra Brands and PepsiCo are among the food giants using AI to cook up new flavors and foods—such as bourbon pork-tenderloin seasoning and pudding flavors meant to call to mind unicorns.
AI can sift through huge numbers of ingredient combinations to offer outside-the-box suggestions that human developers overlooked, Jaewon Kang reports for the Journal. The technology can also scrutinize current taste trends to figure out what customers crave now and predict what they’ll want next. And it can do it so much faster than a staff of food scientists and food testers.
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Financial firms using AI to spot fraud. Financial firms are working to identify potential fraud by analyzing how customers hold their phones, how fast they type and other information about mobile interactions—and the strategy is yielding results, reports WSJ Pro Cybersecurity (separate subscription required). Using artificial-intelligence tools to crunch behavioral data is often a more secure way to verify customers than traditional means such as passcodes, experts say.
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Driverless vehicle consortium formed. A number of autonomous-vehicle players have joined a consortium to work on issues such as safety, security, computing, and software, according to VentureBeat. The Autonomous Vehicle Computing Consortium includes General Motors, Nvidia, Denso, Toyota, Bosch, Arm, Continental, and NXP.
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Video: To get an edge in the oil market, traders are turning to satellites, shadows and a lot of fancy math, reports the WSJ.
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