Top AI news of the week #39: Advsr AI Spotlight

Advsr AI Spotlight

Highlighting notable AI moves at the intersection of strategic operating companies and emerging startups. Big ideas in the works.

Strategic Deployments of AI 

• The Peace Corps announced Tech Corps, a new initiative to recruit, train and deploy skilled Americans to support the adoption of artificial intelligence in Peace Corps host countries participating in the American AI Exports Program
• Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont launched the third phase of the Connecticut Tech Talent Accelerator, a statewide higher education innovation challenge designed to expand artificial intelligence education and workforce training
• Zscaler, a global cloud-based information security company, partnered with Bharti Airtel, one of India’s largest telecommunication service providers, to launch the AI & Cyber Threat Research Center – India, a digital initiative is dedicated to advancing national cyber resilience, protecting sectors, industries and assets that are essential to India’s economic and national security, such as telecommunications, banking, and energy, as well as digital users, and accelerating trusted AI adoption across India’s digital ecosystem
• US Foods, a food distributor and provider of digital foodservice solutions, launched Menu IQ, an AI-powered profitability solution designed to help operators better manage food costs
• WELL Health Technologies, a company operating outpatient clinics that leverage scalable digital health solutions, and HEALWELL AI, a company focused on preventative care, partnered to launch of the first phase of WELLTRUST, a platform enabling secure, consent-driven patient identification for clinical research within WELL-operated clinics in Canada
• Tata Consultancy Services, a provider of IT services, consulting, and business solutions, partnered with ServiceNow, the AI control tower for business reinvention, to help enterprises speed up AI adoption across their businesses and functions
• PhonePe, a digital payments and financial services company, launched an AI-powered natural language search feature built using Microsoft Foundry that enables PhonePe users to initiate and complete in-app tasks via natural language text or voice commands
• FIS, a fintech firm that provides integrated banking, wealth management, risk and compliance, launched its Insurance Risk Suite AI Assistant, a generative AI tool that instantly answers complex questions about building and maintaining risk models
• Weill Cornell Medicine, an academic medical institution that offers health care services, launched a new AI to Advance Medicine initiative that aims to provide the institutional infrastructure and services needed to support AI use safely and effectively among faculty, staff and students
• Emory University’s AI team launched a new Responsible AI website, offering faculty, staff, students and health care teams a clear, accessible hub for guidance on the safe, ethical and effective use of artificial intelligence across the institution
• The Guardian launched a new editorial series, examining how artificial intelligence is transforming work and power across the United States and around the world called, Reworked, which will place workers at the center
• The Texas Tech University System partnered with NVIDIA to deploy next-generation accelerated computing infrastructure, positioning Texas Tech University at the forefront of artificial intelligence, high-performance computing, and advanced research
• Telecom Italia partnered with Microsoft to support Italy’s digital transformation, combining cloud computing, cybersecurity and artificial intelligence
• Meta expanded its partnership with NVIDIA to supply technology for Meta’s AI-optimized data centers
• Sea Limited expanded its strategic partnership with Google to advance the development of AI-powered innovations that can serve users across Sea’s core business lines of digital entertainment, e-commerce, and digital financial services
• Intapp, a provider of industry-specific, cloud-based software solutions, partnered with Harvey, a provider of AI-driven tools to assist legal professionals with research, document review, and contract analysis, to bring industry-standard ethical wall enforcement directly into Harvey’s platform
• Synechron, a digital transformation consulting firm, and Cognition partnered to help global financial institutions modernize critical software faster using AI-assisted engineering

Strategic and AI Startup Collaborations

• Cisco and NVIDIA partnered with SharonAI, which offers infrastructure for traditional AI and GenAI inference and training workloads, to launch Australia’s first Cisco Secure AI Factory
• DBS, a Southeast Asian bank, partnered with Granite Asia, a multi-asset investment platform, to develop investment and financing solutions, including a $110 million AI-focused initial public offering fund, which was distributed exclusively to DBS’ wealth clients
• NxtWave, a training platform that helps people rapidly build industry-relevant skills, partnered with Automation Anywhere, a provider of automation and artificial intelligence, to launch the AI & Agentic Process Automation upskilling initiative, helping students and young professionals across India develop agentic AI and APA skills
• The African Development Bank Group and the United Nations Development Programme launched the AI 10 Billion Initiative, a drive to accelerate responsible artificial intelligence adoption and inclusive digital economic growth across Africa
• McLaren Health Care and its McLaren Heart & Vascular Institute partnered with Bunkerhill Health, a platform for health systems to create, share, and deploy AI agents for clinical and operational tasks, to launch a cardiovascular screening program in Michigan to strengthen and expand its ability to identify patients’ risk for heart disease earlier and connect them with timely, appropriate care
• Datavault AI, a provider of data monetization, credentialing, digital engagement, and real-world asset tokenization technologies, expanded its partnership with Wellgistics Health, the company behind pharmacy dispensing optimization artificial intelligence platform EinsteinRx, to add additional Datavault AI intellectual property
• Blue Machines AI, an enterprise voice AI platform, partnered with Cartesia, a provider of real-time multimodal intelligence for all devices, to deliver low-latency conversational Voice AI solutions for enterprises

AI Startup Acquisitions

• Pure Storage, a storage and data management company, acquired 1touch, a data intelligence and orchestration company, to make GenAI and agentic AI secure and compliant enough for large-scale deployment
• Myriad360, a solutions and systems integrator specializing in cybersecurity, modern infrastructure, cloud, and artificial intelligence, acquired Advizex Technologies, an IT consulting and outsourcing company specializing in infrastructure and enterprise application solutions
• AUI, the company behind Apollo-1, a neuro-symbolic artificial intelligence model, acquired Quack AI, developer of specialized technology for operating AI agents for customer service
• CUBE, a provider of Automated Regulatory Intelligence and Regulatory Change Management, acquired 4CRisk.ai, an agentic AI platform that delivers policy and procedure mapping to regulatory obligations, controls and risks
• Salesforce acquired Momentum, a conversational insights and revenue orchestration platform
• Incorta, a decision intelligence platform, acquired Layout.dev, a no-code, AI application-building platform
• Cadence, a company applying computational software to accelerate innovation in the engineering design of silicon to systems, acquired Hexagon AB’s Design and Engineering business, to capitalize on the Physical AI opportunity
• Nvidia acquired Illumex, a Generative Semantic Fabric platform that transforms an enterprise’s organizational corpus of knowledge into AI-ready, context-rich business language embedded into semantic ontologies
• SpatialChat, a video communication platform redefining how distributed teams collaborate and execute work, acquired Teemyco, a company in the virtual collaboration space, to accelerate the AI-Powered Cloud HQ
• Heidi, a company building an AI Care Partner to expand clinical capacity by automating administrative work so clinicians can focus on patients, acquired clinical AI company AutoMedica
• Procurement Sciences, an end-to-end AI growth platform for government contractors, acquired Rogue AI, an AI-native innovator in proposal and workflow automation for the government contracting industry
• OneMagnify, a provider of AI-enabled marketing solutions, acquired the Performance Marketing business of Optimal, a digital marketing partner specializing in performance media and audience data solutions
• ThriveCart, an all-in-one creator commerce and learning platform, acquired VBOUT, an AI-enriched marketing automation, CRM, and customer journey platform
• Foundry, a developer of creative software for the media and entertainment industry, acquired Griptape, an enterprise-grade AI orchestration platform

AI Outtakes

• In December, Amazon Web Services got hit by a 13-hour outage, which the company reportedly blamed on “human error,” even though several Amazon employees said that the outage was the fault of Kiro, Amazon’s AI coding assistant, which was working autonomously when it came across an issue. Kiro decided that its best course of action was to “delete and recreate the environment” that was causing problems, leading to the outage

Disclaimer: This information is provided for general information purposes only and does not constitute any form of endorsement, recommendation, or advice. Links to third party websites are provided for reference and convenience purposes. This information has not been independently verified.