Top AI news of the week #25: 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 

• ServiceNow, an AI platform for business transformation, and NTT DATA, a provider of AI, digital business, and technology services, expanded their partnership to accelerate AI‑led transformation for enterprises
• Lockheed Martin introduced the STAR.OS solution, a new tool that enables different AI systems to work together, which has the potential to be used in future collaborations with private sector companies, and solves a long-standing challenge in the field of AI by providing a common framework that makes it easier to combine different AI systems and services to achieve a common goal
• Anthropic and Iceland’s Ministry of Education and Children partnered to bring Claude to teachers across the nation, launching a national AI education pilot to give teachers from every region of Iceland access to advanced AI tools as the country explores how artificial intelligence can transform education
• Hitachi Vantara, a data storage, infrastructure and hybrid cloud management subsidiary of Hitachi Ltd., announced Hitachi iQ Studio, which is designed to help enterprises build, deploy and manage AI agents and applications at scale
• The Mount Sinai Health System partnered with Microsoft to implement Dragon Copilot, a new AI clinical assistant designed to streamline clinical documentation, surface critical information, and automate administrative tasks across care settings
• Cognizant partnered with Anthropic’s Claude to help its enterprise customers and internal teams move from AI experimentation to scaled business outcomes, combining the Claude family of models and agentic tooling with Cognizant’s engineering platforms and industry blueprints to help deliver measurable impact at enterprise scale
• The Oklahoma City Thunder and Google partnered to accelerate artificial intelligence opportunities in Oklahoma, with Google unveiling a $5 million commitment to fund new AI training programs, a statewide curriculum, and continued support for the Thunder Launchpad
• Deutsche Telekom and NVIDIA partnered on an Industrial AI Cloud, a sovereign, enterprise-grade platform, bringing together Deutsche Telekom’s infrastructure and operations and NVIDIA AI and Omniverse digital twin platforms to power the AI era of Germany’s industrial transformation
• Coe College partnered with the Google AI for Education Accelerator to provide AI tools, resources and training for Kohawks, helping to prepare them for an increasingly AI-driven professional landscape
• Obsidian, an AI-powered studio start-up, partnered with Imagine Entertainment, the film and TV production company co-founded by Brian Grazer and Ron Howard
• The Kroger Co. and Instacart expanded their partnership, investing in AI to simplify customer experience and improve efficiency
• Snowflake and SAP SE partnered to enable organizations to leverage Snowflake’s AI Data Cloud and SAP Business Data Cloud together with semantically rich data
• The American College of Cardiology and OpenEvidence, which provides AI-powered medical search and clinical decision support, partnered to accelerate the translation of cardiovascular clinical guidance and research into clinical implementation at the point of care
• Snap and Perplexity partnered to integrate Perplexity’s AI-powered answer engine directly into Snapchat, giving Snapchat’s users a new way to ask questions, explore topics they care about, and learn about the world
• Duos Technologies Group, through its operating subsidiary Duos Edge AI, a provider of adaptive, modular, and scalable Edge Data Center solutions, partnered with the Nomad Futurist Foundation as an Inspiration Sponsor
• Cengage Group, an EdTech company that provides secondary and higher education to learners at an affordable price, partnered with Amazon Web Services, combining AWS’s artificial intelligence technologies with Cengage Group’s learning design expertise
• CrowdStrike and CoreWeave partnered to power the secure AI cloud foundation for the agentic era and accelerate the march toward secure AGI
• Datavault AI, a provider of data monetization, credentialing and digital engagement technologies, partnered with Rodney’s Comedy Club, integrating its VerifyU, Joke Token, and ADIO solutions to transform the way audiences and performers interact in live entertainment environments

Strategic and AI Startup Collaborations

• Enterprise CMS Storyblok partnered with AI-native web development platform Netlify to enable brands to close the gap between content management and project development and opening the door to faster and more reliable content deployment times at scale
• Franklin Resources, a global investment management organization operating as Franklin Templeton, partnered with Wand AI to deploy agentic AI across its platform
• SimpliTaught, a provider of generative AI-based education technology, partnered with the Zanzibar Ministry of Education and Vocational Training to implement a major digital learning program across public schools
• Garnet Technologies WLL, the IT & Software Services arm of JBK Group that specializes in IT software services, security, and safety and automation, partnered with Matrice.ai, which offers a no/low-code computer vision platform for rapid ML project deployment, and Voltage Park,a provider of infrastructure for machine learning, to power AI transformation with their Vision AI Factory
• 365 Data Centers, a provider of network-centric colocation, network, cloud, and other managed services, partnered with Robot Network, a platform for running intelligent AI with precision and efficiency, to provide enterprise customers with new private cloud AI solutions
• Napster, a company powering the next generation of embodied and agentic AI, partnered with Microsoft Azure, leveraging Microsoft’s Azure OpenAI platform, Azure AI Foundry, and Azure Kubernetes Service to deliver scalable agentic AI solutions that help Cooper Parry empower their teams
• Seekr, an AI company that empowers enterprises & government agencies to build accurate, explainable AI solutions ready for critical impact, and Fossefall, an AI infrastructure company, partnered to accelerate the deployment of sovereign, clean-energy AI capacity in Europe
• Movate, a provider of digital technology and customer experience services, partnered with Lyzr.ai, an enterprise AI agent platform to transform how enterprises deploy and scale AI across their IT and business operations
• RELI Group, a partner to federal agencies in health and security, partnered with Basys.ai, a provider of healthcare AI solutions
• Hyundai Motor Group partnered with CuspAI, an AI startup discovering breakthrough materials, to accelerate the development of innovative materials through artificial intelligence technology
• Vitality, which provides personal, business, and corporate health insurance solutions, partnered with Google to launch Vitality AI, which integrates Google Cloud’s AI and data analytics, with Vitality’s health datasets and behavior-change expertise
• Spectatr.ai, a developer of AI-powered sports technology, partnered with the Association of National Olympic Committees and the Islamic Solidarity Sports Association to deliver real-time highlight clips during the Islamic Solidarity Games in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
• Expert.ai, a provider of enterprise AI solutions for business value creation, expanded its partnership with S&P Global Commodity Insights, the energy and commodities division of S&P Global, to enhance content intelligence and advance digital transformation across the energy and commodities industry
• AIEnablers, a specialist in AI-powered Recruitment-as-a-Service, and X0PA AI, a global recruitment software platform, partnered to revolutionize recruitment across Oceania
• Palantir Technologies and Valoriza, an environmental services companies, partnered so Valoriza’s waste management and urban services will be operations powered by Palantir’s AIP software

AI Startup Acquisitions

• AMD acquired MK1, a company focused on high-speed inference and reasoning-based AI technologies
• Salesforce acquired Spindle AI, an agentic analytics platform
• fal, a generative media platform for developers, acquired Remade, a startup building an AI-native tool for creative and design teams
• Semiconductor software company Cadence Design Systems acquired ChipStack, a startup developing AI tools to speed up chip verification and design
• Automation Anywhere, a provider of Agentic Process Automation and agentic solutions, acquired Aisera, a provider of agentic solutions for autonomous IT
• BigBear.ai, a provider of AI-powered decision intelligence solutions, acquired Ask Sage, a Generative AI platform for secure distribution of AI models and agentic AI capabilities
• Bugcrowd, a provider of crowdsourced cybersecurity, acquired Mayhem Security, a provider of AI offensive security
• Hexaware Technologies, a provider of IT solutions and services, acquired CyberSolve, a global specialist in identity and access management solutions, to expand AI-led cybersecurity capabilities
• Clio, a provider of legal AI technology, acquired vLex, which delivers comprehensive legal intelligence solutions
• ClickHouse, a real-time analytics database, acquired LibreChat, an open-source AI chat platform that provides a unified interface for interacting with large language models
• United Fintech, a digital transformation group for financial institutions, acquired Trade Ledger, the company behind an AI-powered solution that automates commercial and business lending
• Startalyst.ai, a platform that uses artificial intelligence to help aspiring entrepreneurs generate personalized business ideas and plans, acquired SmallBusinessIdeas.ai as part of its ongoing effort to expand its entrepreneurial ecosystem
• Alternative Payments, a financial operating system for B2B services companies, acquired Delmar Insights, a data and analytics platform, to unite payments automation, business intelligence and AI-driven analytics
• Propy, an AI-powered title and escrow platform, acquired a title company in Alabama that commands over 40% market share in Mobile County
• Tradespace, an end-to-end AI-powered platform for intellectual property management acquired Paragon, a patent-drafting startup
• Optain Health, a healthcare technology company applying artificial intelligence, robotic retinal imaging, and teleophthalmology to detect eye and systemic disease earlier,  acquired EyePACS, a teleophthalmology network

AI Outtakes

• A series of viral Halloween costume videos showing seniors at a retirement home captured attention across TikTok, but the account behind the clips, @basincreekretirement, is completely AI-generated. In one of the most popular videos, a woman stands with spices attached to her outfit. A voice off-camera asks, “Martha, what are you supposed to be?” She smiles and replies, “I’m a spice girl.” The clip has racked up over 15.4 million views and 1.5 million likes. Another video shows an elderly man covered in watches, each strapped around his waist. A worker asks, “What are you supposed to be, Mr. Andrews?” He grins and answers, “I’m a waste of time.” That video alone has garnered 13.3 million views and 1.3 million likes. One TikToker commented, “It should be mandatory to put an AI label….” Another wrote, “Why are we using AI for anything. Especially this. Like what is the point aside from conditioning people to not be able to tell the difference.” Others admitted the realism is starting to feel unsettling. “AI is getting harder to spot it’s scary,” one person commented

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