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
- Citi Wealth launched two AI-powered tools: Advisor Insights, providing Citi Wealth bankers and advisors with a tailored dashboard featuring messages about market turns, portfolios and current events, and AskWealth, a GenAI-powered conversational assistant
- Broadcom and Canonical expanded their partnership to help customers ship modern container-based and AI applications faster and more securely by bringing together Canonical’s open-source software with VMware Cloud Foundation
- Volkswagen Group extended its partnership with Amazon Web Services for another five years to further enhance its factory cloud, Digital Production Platform, which was developed by AWS and VW Group to refine manufacturing processes across its global production network
- Procore Technologies, a provider of construction management software, partnered with Amazon Web Services to accelerate Procore’s product development in AI, data operability, and analytics
- Notre Dame Law School partnered with Harvey, a developer of a generative artificial intelligence platform designed specifically for the legal profession, to integrate AI into legal education at Notre Dame Law School
- Pearson and Cognizant partnered to enhance Pearson’s platforms with generative and agentic AI and help Pearson enhance its products including learner experiences and applications by implementing cloud-native solutions with a microservices architecture, leveraging Cognizant Flowsource
- X-energy Reactor Company, Amazon, Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power Corporation, and Doosan Enerbility partnered to accelerate the deployment of Xe-100 fourth generation advanced small modular reactors and TRISO-X fuel in the United States to meet growing power demands from data centers and artificial intelligence
- Digital Realty, a provider of cloud- and carrier-neutral data center, colocation, and interconnection solutions, partnered with Vultr, a cloud infrastructure company, to deliver enterprise-ready, GPU-accelerated AI infrastructure across key global markets
- Brighton Hill Community School, a coeducational secondary school in Hampshire, partnered with Acer for Education, Intel, and Microsoft to rollout Acer TravelMate laptops, equipped with Intel Core Ultra processors and integrated with Microsoft Copilot, an AI assistant embedded in daily schoolwork
- Global management consulting firm Kearney partnered with Microsoft to accelerate AI rollout and adoption across the Middle East
- Reliance Industries partnered with Google and Meta to launch Reliance Intelligence, to create a national-scale AI infrastructure in India, including enterprise tools and services for a variety of sectors
- Nokia partnered with Extreme Broadband and its wholly owned subsidiary, Open DC, to upgrade Open DC’s Artificial Intelligence data centers
Strategic and AI Startup Collaborations
- Cognizant partnered with Workfabric AI, a company building a context engine for enterprise AI, so that Workfabric AI’s ContextFabric platform, which takes the organizational DNA of enterprises and turns it into actionable context for AI agents, will power Cognizant’s 1,000 context engineers
- IBM partnered with HackerOne, an offensive cybersecurity company that helps enterprises find vulnerabilities in their software, to kickstart a bug bounty program, for its Granite family of AI models. Through this new initiative, researchers will be invited through the HackerOne platform to find ways to adversarially attack Granite models and make them act in ways they weren’t intended to
- Veolia Australia and New Zealand partnered with EverestLabs, a developer of AI and robotics for recycling, to digitize and automate sorting operations at one of its material recovery facilities in Perth
- 3D printer manufacturer Creality partnered with Tencent to integrate its AI modeling platform, MakeNow, with Tencent’s large foundation model, Hunyuan
- RealReports, an AI-powered property advisor, partnered with Doorify MLS, a provider of real estate information services, giving Doorify subscribers access to the RealReports platform, which combines datasets such as tax history, zoning, permits, climate risk and liens with AI-driven features
- African law firm Webber Wentzel partnered with Legora, a provider of collaborative AI for lawyers, to serve as the first anchor technology in Webber Wentzel’s newly launched Innovation Lab
- SMX, a provider of email security and hosting delivered via the cloud model, partnered with Google Public Sector and and World Wide Technology to launch a pilot program for AI-driven intelligence
- Scout AI, a developer of an AI brain for defense robotics, and Hendrick Motorsports Technical Solutions partnered on NOMAD, HMS’s unmanned ground vehicle controlled by Scout’s Fury autonomy system
- IQSTEL’s artificial intelligence subsidiary, Reality Border, partnered with Mobility Tech , a call center services provider specializing in the U.S. health services sector, to integrate Reality Border’s AI-powered call center technologies with Mobility Tech’s human agents
- RealSense, a developer of robotic perception, partnered with NVIDIA to accelerate the adoption and capabilities of physical AI across humanoids and autonomous mobile robots
- SmartLabs and Sonrai Analytics partnered to bring Sonrai’s AI capabilities directly into SmartLabs’ network of research centers
- Perficient, an IT consulting firm that helps companies adapt their systems to AI-first solutions, and WRITER, a provider of agentic AI for the enterprise, partnered to deliver business outcomes to the Global 2000 through AI transformation
- Billables AI, a provider of automated timekeeping and billing optimization for professional services, partnered with LeanLaw, a legal billing and accounting platform built for modern law firms
- Juro, an intelligent contracting platform, partnered with Wordsmith, an AI workspace for in-house teams, so Juro’s clients can use Wordsmith as part of their core workflows and Wordsmith clients will be able to sync with Juro’s system of record and leverage Juro’s AI tools
- ScienceLogic, a provider of automated IT operations and observability, and Carahsoft, a government IT solutions provider, partnered so Carahsoft will serve as ScienceLogic’s Master Government Aggregator
- GPTBots.ai, the AI agent platform of Aurora Mobile, a provider of customer engagement and marketing technology services in China, partnered with GP Batteries, a battery manufacturing company
AI Startup Acquisitions
- Accenture acquired NeuraFlash, a Salesforce and gen AI consulting company that specializes in agentic solutions for sales, service, and field service operations
- CrowdStrike acquired Onum, a provider of real-time telemetry pipeline management
- Cybersecurity company Varonis acquired SlashNext, an AI-native email security company
- OpenAI acquired product development platform Statsig
- mPulse, an AI-powered provider of Health Experience and Insights technology, acquired Clarity Software Solutions, a provider of technology-driven healthcare engagement through multimodal communications
- AltaVestAI, an AI-powered, self-clearing investment banking broker-dealer platform, acquired internal-use versions of InteliClear, a post-trade processing platform, and AUG AI, an artificial intelligence engine purpose-built for investment banking, research, and trading analytics
- SePRO, a provider of environmental solutions for water and land restoration, acquired Arietta.ai, a company that develops AI solutions for healthcare and life sciences
- MariaDB plc acquired SkySQL, an AI-powered, serverless database-as-a-service platform
AI Outtakes
- Taco Bell is rethinking its use of artificial intelligence to power drive-through restaurants in the US after comical videos of the tech making mistakes were viewed millions of times. In one clip, a customer seemingly crashed the system by ordering 18,000 water cups, while in another a person got increasingly angry as the AI repeatedly asked him to add more drinks to his order. Taco Bell’s Chief Digital and Technology Officer Dane Mathews told The Wall Street Journal that deploying the voice AI has had its challenges. “Sometimes it lets me down, but sometimes it really surprises me,” he said. He said the firm was “learning a lot” – but he would now think carefully about where to use AI going forward
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