Stability AI, a leading open generative AI company, today announced the expansion of its senior team with key industry leaders who will support the company's growth and path to commercialization. New hires include sales, engineering, product and operations talent from Google, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Twitter, Uber, IBM, and other technology companies.

Since March, Stability AI has increased headcount by 30 percent and launched nearly two dozen new products, including text-to-image language model SDXL 1.0, open-source language model StableLM, and coding assistant StableCode. The company is working with AWS to make its text-to-image models on Amazon Bedrock, thereby demonstrating both companies' commitment to delivering customers and developers the best available generative AI solutions. Further, Stability AI has added clients and is working with HubSpot, Tome, Jasper, Supermicro, and others, delivering on its mission to democratise AI through scale and accessibility of generative technologies.

Stability AI is developing cutting-edge research in-house and across communities to bring multimodal generative AI to enterprises, small businesses, and user groups worldwide. According to Goldman Sachs Research, AI is predicted to bring improvements to employee productivity and the global economy, driving global GDP growth by 7 percent in a 10-year period.

Stability AI is managed by a team of seasoned executives, including Chief Technology Officer Tom Mason, General Counsel Adam Avrunin, Chief Financial Officer Peter O'Donoghue, and many others, all under the leadership of Chief Executive Officer Emad Mostaque. "Stability AI is thrilled to welcome these impressive and highly skilled individuals to our senior team, which will allow us to scale our business, enter new markets, stay ahead of the innovation curve and engage with global stakeholders to cement a positive generative AI future," said Stability AI CEO Emad Mostaque. "We are on an exciting growth trajectory and our ambitious product release strategy is demonstrating to the world the power of generative AI as a tool to unlock humanity's potential."

New hires include:

Ozden Onder, Chief People Officer: Onder was previously the Chief People Officer at Wildlife Studios and has held HR leadership roles at Atlassian, LinkedIn, and eBay. Ozden's role at Stability AI involves creating a positive and engaging work environment, spearheading the development of talent programs, and aligning HR strategy with overall business objectives to help scale operations worldwide, as we expand our global presence;
Jordan Valdés, Vice President of Communications & Community: Former Vice President of Partner Communications for IBM and political appointee of the Obama administration, among other posts, Valdés leads Stability AI communications and community teams to foster candid, transparent and responsive stakeholder engagement;
Scott Trowbridge, Vice President of Business Development: With growth leadership experience at Circle and WeWork, and five years of startup operating experience, Trowbridge leads the business development and partnerships to drive the greater implementation and adoption of Stability AI models and products; and
Ben Brooks, Global Head of Public Policy: With deep advocacy experience at Google X, Coinbase, and Uber, Brooks leads Stability AI's public policy efforts. He works with governments around the world to champion AI policies that promote safe and open innovation.
These leaders join the world-class scientific and research team at Stability AI, which is led by Robin Rombach, Joe Penna and Christian Laforte, who was recently promoted to Language Models Research Director; and who are bringing the leading open multi-modal generative AI models to consumers and enterprises the world over. Recently joining our research and engineering teams are Carlos Riquelme, Takuya Akiba, Tim Dockhorn, Axel Sauer, Rahim Entezari, Pablo Pernías, Sumith Kulal, and Dominik Lorenz.

Stability AI recently participated with other industry leaders in the White House sponsored red-teaming event at DEF CON 31 featuring the company's language models. The findings will help Stability AI and the community build safer AI models, and demonstrate the importance of independent evaluation for AI safety and accountability.

Stability AI was recently named one of TIME's 100 Most Influential Companies.

The Arena Group, a technology platform and media company home to Sports Illustrated, Parade, TheStreet, Men’s Journal, and over 265 other brands, has launched the ‘Arena Creator Network’ (ACN) backed by iconic brands across its portfolio. The network will consist of more than 100 creators reaching over 100 million followers, covering all genres – from culture to food, fashion, sports, travel, and more – activated to launch rapid integrated social campaigns on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube with original creator content, exclusive editorial coverage, OTT offerings, and over-the-air channels.

The ACN is fully supported by targeted and powerful content distribution with the brand prestige and audience reach of nearly 90 million monthly users across Arena’s sports, finance, and lifestyle media brands, as reported by Comscore. The programs deliver smart targeting through audience and interest matchmaking that is cost-efficient and effective, equipping brands to reach millions of consumers. Additionally, the ACN is developing significant advantages for creators and brand partners through unparalleled access to in-person experiences spanning major sporting events, personal finance, food and travel, as well as entertainment and lifestyle.

The move follows a surge in social growth across The Arena Group properties under the guidance of Ting Wang, Senior Vice President of Audience Development, including:

• Achieving 120% growth in social referrals across its brand portfolio from 2021 to 2022, as per Google Analytics.
• Video views are expected to triple to 1.5 billion this year from 2021, totaling 175% growth, as reported by ListenFirst.
• Consistently securing the #1 share of voice on Facebook link posts among all major sports competitors over the past year for Sports Illustrated, as confirmed by CrowdTangle.
• As of August 2023, Sports Illustrated F1 boasts nearly 120,000 followers, establishing itself as one of the fastest-growing Formula 1 TikTok accounts as compared to individual F1 creators and publishers over the same 3-month timeframe.
• Sports Illustrated Media Group, the Company’s sports vertical, achieved the #2 ranking in Comscore’s audience measurement of U.S. sports properties in July 2023.
• Parade grew social referrals by 161% year over year from last year to this year, according to The Arena Group’s internal data.

Rob Barrett, President of Media at The Arena Group said, “This network is a natural next step in media and the evolution of our business. We are leading the way in the movement toward creator and brand collaborations, putting creators and influencers front and center in our coverage of culture and events in sports, lifestyle, and finance worlds. Our goal is to foster strong relationships between content creators and our iconic, trusted brands to empower the next generation of storytellers to deliver impact for sponsors and unlock new revenue streams for all parties.”

To continue the Company’s audience development growth strategy in the social space, and spearhead the Arena Creator Network under Ting Wang, The Arena Group has welcomed:

• Lindsay Calabrese, General Manager of Creator Network, leverages over 12 years of experience in leading innovation, cultural impact strategy and creator programs with theAmplify (acquired by Brandtech group), Whalar, and Cashmere Agency.
• Amanda Solomon, Vice President of Creator Relations, has extensive background across gaming, technology, esports, and entertainment. She previously held the position of Director of Influencer Partnerships with Viral Nation.
• Nadine Jarrard, Vice President of Social Sales, contributing 15 years of experience building high-performing teams, most recently as a founding member of PROJECT Z.
• Monique Kakar, Vice President of Creator Strategy and Partnerships, brings almost 20 years of marketing experience; led a strategic sales partnership with Made In Network and integrated brands into leading YouTube channels paired with media and exclusive editorial content across various owned and operated platforms.

“We are embracing the rapid change in how consumers interact, learn, search, and experience content and how creators use new platforms to express themselves and connect with audiences… reimagining storytelling by partnering creators with brands in front of and behind the lens. The result is deeper through line, social-first content that will inform editorial coverage from our iconic brands. This is how we are uniquely built to help brands tap into culture and move at the speed of culture in a very authentic, integrated way. It’s really a modern, creative media solution, built with purpose,” said Lindsay Calabrese, General Manager of Creator Network at The Arena Group.

Creating a new standard for SaaS metrics, SaaSGrid helps companies identify, calculate and track the most important metrics

Today SaaSGrid, the data and analysis platform for SaaS metrics, announced a $3.3M seed round led by Craft Ventures. SaaSGrid is the first dashboarding tool built specifically for SaaS companies: users simply connect their data sources and get perfect, real-time charts displaying the metrics every SaaS business should be tracking. The need for a tool like SaaSGrid has never been more critical as companies strive for efficient growth amidst a difficult fundraising environment. The company is formally launching on stage at SaaStr Annual today.

Despite broad agreement on which metrics are most important for SaaS businesses, there are no dashboarding or business intelligence tools that calculate them automatically. Creating charts is a manual, time-intensive, and error-prone process that involves pulling data into warehouses and CSVs, cleaning up messy data, and writing SQL queries and Excel formulas. The process is so burdensome that SaaS metrics are often reserved only for quarterly board meetings, even though a real-time view would be incredibly helpful to founders seeking to understand their business.

"The need for a SaaS-specific dashboarding tool was so acute, yet nothing existed in the market. So we built it," said David Sacks, co-founder of SaaSGrid and co-founder and partner at Craft Ventures. "SaaSGrid provides a way for companies to standardize their reporting and ensure they're tracking the most important metrics, calculated correctly."

SaaSGrid has identified and standardized the calculations for more than 70 essential metrics, including mission-critical calculations such as MRR, ARR, Net Dollar Retention, CAC Payback, Burn Multiple, and Runway. Using SaaSGrid is simple. After connecting data sources including Salesforce, Hubspot, Stripe, Quickbooks, and spreadsheets, SaaS teams have instant access to real-time dashboards and insights – including metrics they might not have known they should be tracking. This gives SaaS leaders access to all the information they need to run their companies day-to-day, report to their board, or engage in fundraising rounds.

SaaSGrid CEO and co-founder Ethan Ruby developed an early prototype of SaaSGrid to help the investment team at Craft Ventures run metrics for prospective investments. Once founders saw these dashboards, they wanted access to the tool, not just to help with fundraising but for their internal KPI dashboards. With this $3.3 million in seed funding, SaaSGrid officially launches independently of Craft and is available to SaaS startups worldwide. The funds will be used to further develop the product, including pipeline metrics and benchmarking.

"I've spent countless hours wrangling data and writing SQL queries and Excel formulas to make SaaS metrics dashboards – both as an operator and as an investor." said Ethan Ruby. "The process is painful, and I found myself wishing there was a tool that could help. In talking to SaaS founders and operators, I realized I wasn't alone: everyone struggles to pull data from their systems, clean up edge cases, and get the accurate reporting necessary to run their business. SaaSGrid is the tool SaaS leaders have been wanting for."

SaaSGrid is already the source of truth for KPIs for hundreds of SaaS companies and is SOC 2 compliant so customers know their data is safe and confidential.

"Before SaaSGrid, we had to manually download Salesforce reports every quarter and spend days modifying, calculating, and verifying the data to ensure it was up-to-date. Since implementing SaaSGrid, we are able to monitor sales and renewal progress in real-time, and generating board reports takes minutes instead of days," said Diane Garcia, Director of Operations at Scratchpad.

Easily capture contacts from any event and seamlessly integrate them
into CRM and marketing automation platforms for immediate follow-up

Mobly brings long-awaited mobile software innovation to sales acceleration market,
helping B2B companies generate faster leads and revenue

Mobile software startup, Mobly, introduced its new application for B2B companies to drive a faster and more accurate lead capture process. With Mobly, search contacts by name and company or scan a badge or business card using AI-powered optical character recognition (OCR) at any event. Mobly then enriches the lead information and automatically syncs profile and activity data in CRM or marketing automation platforms to reduce the time to a qualified lead – a process that usually takes companies days or weeks can now be done in seconds. The Mobly app is available today for Apple iOS and Google Android users.

Founded by industry software veterans with nearly 50 years of combined sales, product, and engineering leadership experience, Mobly is a mobile-first SaaS platform that connects field marketing, demand generation, sales, and revenue operations. Capture leads from any event, drive customer engagement, and get accurate insights to speed the sales cycle – all from one place.

"All our leads, conversations, and steps kick off within Mobly and seamlessly integrate into our CRM system," said Paige Bennett, director of experiential marketing at Awardco, an early adopter of Mobly. "Now our sales squad dedicates less effort to recording tasks and can keep their eyes on nurturing those valuable customer connections."

The chances of closing a deal are eight times higher when replying to a lead within five minutes.¹ While mobile is intertwined in today's business environment, most sales acceleration technologies are purpose-built for a desktop experience, making the process of capturing leads and entering them into a database highly manual and different for every event. This slows response times from sales and marketing and creates longer sales cycles, cold opportunities, and missed revenue.

"Mobly speeds up the lead collection process and streamlines getting solid data to the sales team for their follow-up," continued Bennett. "Gone are the days of relying on and shelling out for expensive event-exclusive scanners. This not only keeps our budget in check but also establishes a uniform approach for every single event."

Mobly is an event-agnostic lead capture app for field teams to scan and find contacts, segment lists, assign leads to a campaign, specify their interests, and automate actional next steps for sales and marketing. Enriched lead information such as contact and company data, social media profiles, and other metadata are then added for a more accurate picture of registrants and booth visitors. Native integration with leading CRM and marketing automation platforms ensures a near real-time hand-off of leads to sales and marketing.

"Sales acceleration falls apart when a laptop isn't handy. Mobly changes that with a mobile-first platform for field and sales teams on the go," said Zach Barney, co-founder and CEO of Mobly. "Organizations can confidently maintain an accurate pipeline, automatically trigger next steps to keep the sales cycle moving, and finally show measurable ROI from their field strategies."

With recent angel funding to kickstart the company earlier this year, Mobly developed its mobile platform and signed more than 10 early adopter companies so far. Today's news signals the company's focus and investment in a mobile-first platform for the important sales acceleration market, an opportunity estimated to be $4 billion globally.

Mobly's capabilities to capture leads, enrich them, call, text, email, or send a social media message to a new lead, and integrate lead information and activity data in CRM and marketing automation platforms are available today. Advanced insights and analytics will be available later this year.

Index uncovers an average of 37 errors per page on the web's most visited websites, with significant barriers across retail, travel, and other industries

AudioEye, Inc., the industry-leading enterprise SaaS accessibility company, today released its first-ever Digital Accessibility Index, a combination of automated AI findings coupled with expert audits from members of the disability community, to identify the most common digital accessibility issues across 40,000 websites. Of the 3 billion website elements tested (i.e., images, links, headers), the findings concluded every page tested had at least one accessibility error — and the average page had 37 items that failed one of the success criteria of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG).

"AudioEye's Digital Accessibility Index underscores the unacceptable reality that digital experiences are broken for people with disabilities, preventing them from accomplishing critical tasks that many of us regularly depend on, such as online shopping, banking, news access, job-related activities, and more," said David Moradi, CEO of AudioEye. "This Index shows a clear need to approach digital accessibility with a combination of AI-driven detection and automation paired with expert audits from members of the disability community."

AudioEye's report found that the most frequent barriers were related to image accessibility, descriptive links, and keyboard accessibility, which can significantly impact the ability of the 1.3 billion people globally with a disability to utilize online services and experiences successfully.

Key insights from the report include:

• 56% of the 32 million images scanned had faulty or missing image alternative text, making it difficult for people using screen readers to understand the full context of image-heavy pages. 
• On average, each enterprise page had five links that lacked critical context for people with disabilities, making it hard to navigate between pages or know where clicking a link would take them. 
• 25% of forms were missing clear labels and instructions for people with disabilities, preventing them from submitting critical information to customer service, completing purchases, and other essential activities. 

In addition to the automated scan, AudioEye's team of certified experts reviewed the top 3-5 companies in multiple industries, including government, and found significant barriers keeping users from accomplishing core site objectives, including:

Retail
AudioEye testers encountered barriers keeping them from being able to complete a purchase, such as needing to be alerted when forms in the checkout process needed to include required information. Additionally, some users experienced no alert when adding an item to the cart, leading to confusion and potentially incorrect orders. 

Media
Media sites generally have more video content than other industries, yet testers encountered unlabeled video player controls, making it difficult to start, stop, or pause videos. Additionally, keyboard accessibility issues prevented keyboard-only users from clicking between articles, sometimes getting stuck in slideshows with no way to exit. 

Travel
Testers encountered pop-up windows that contained no information about flights or rooms for screen reader users and no way to close the window using a keyboard alone. Additionally, vague or missing image alt text failed to paint a verbal picture that would help non-sighted users decide about rooms or amenities.

While the barriers found were significant, impacting customer experience, revenue, and critical site objectives, the issues found are fixable through a combination of AI-driven automation and expert audits. 

Methodology
AudioEye conducted an automated scan of over 2 million pages across 40,000 websites from companies with over $100M in annual revenue, starting at the homepage and following every link until it scanned up to 100 pages per site. More than 3 billion site-specific elements were tested against 25 of the 78 WCAG 2.1 criteria. Following the scan, accessibility experts— including members of the disability community — manually audited the top sites in each industry, revealing which issues are most disruptive to users.

Innovative virtual clienteling technology promises to usher in a new era of online shopping defined by trust, credibility, and personalization, achieved by creating meaningful connections through real-life video experiences

Firework, the leading video commerce and engagement platform, today announced the general availability release of its new One-to-one Video Chat product — a groundbreaking new virtual shopping solution that brings the connectivity, convenience, and personalization of in-store shopping to the digital customer experience. Firework 1:1 Video Chat modules can be added to any page on the open web and enable customers to initiate live, one-to-one video calls with dedicated sales associates or brand representatives with a single click.

The innovative new technology promises to dramatically reshape today's e-commerce landscape by combining the convenience of online shopping with the personalization, interactivity, and support of the in-store customer experience. What's more, by providing immediate, one-to-one access to knowledgeable product experts, One-to-one Video Chat provides customers with a seamless, safe, and well-informed shopping experience suited to their unique preferences and needs.

"At Firework, we are revolutionizing the way consumers engage with online shopping," said Jerry Luk, Co-founder and President of Firework. "Our one-to-one video chat is more than just a product; it's a transformative experience that recreates the intimacy and personal connection of a physical store visit. It's about so much more than simple convenience — through this innovation, we're bridging the gap between digital convenience and real-world interactions, crafting a future where shopping online is just as engaging and personalized as walking into your favorite store, and interacting with your favorite sales associate."

As is true of all Firework innovations, One-to-one Video Chat boasts an array of advanced capabilities and unique features that set the solution apart from other virtual clienteling technologies on the market. In addition to a variety of industry-leading technical differentiators — such as ultra-low latency, enhanced security, and seamless multi-device switching — Firework One-to-one Video Chat offers a variety of unique features such as:

• User Privacy: Firework's One-to-one Video Chat product was designed with user privacy at top of mind. All customer conversations are initiated as one-way video chats by default — meaning the virtual sales associate is visible to the customer, but not vice-versa, resulting in an interactive, visually-engaging experience for the customer that maintains their own privacy. This ensures a personalized shopping experience that respects individual preferences and prioritizes user confidentiality, allowing consumers to shop with confidence and peace of mind.
  
  
• Proactive Assistance: Proactive Assistance allows online sales representatives to engage customers proactively, by issuing a text-based alert (or ping) offering assistance or providing information or guidance. Proactive Assistance gives brands greater flexibility to shape their own customer service experience — including a more direct, white-glove approach that addresses customers' questions, needs, and preferences immediately, and in real-time.
  
  
• Guided Shopping: Firework's One-to-one Video Chat is far more than just a "Zoom for websites." Instead, it's like having a virtual companion for online shopping. With the Guided Shopping feature, sales associates can actually accompany customers as they navigate the online store — moving from page to page and scrolling through listings right alongside them, all while suggesting complementary items, answering questions, and providing a truly immersive, personalized shopping experience.
  
  
• Interactive Exploration: Interactive Exploration, also known as co-browsing, takes digital interactivity to a whole new level. With co-browsing, customers can initiate "virtual try-on" sessions, which let users assess apparel for fit and examine intricate product details up close just as they would in-store. Customers can also collaborate with sales associates in real time, customize product choices, and enjoy an unprecedented degree of assurance in their online purchases.
  
  
• Expertise Anywhere: Firework's One-to-one Video Chat solution also boasts device- and location-agnostic functionality, meaning consumers and experts can connect from anywhere and on any internet-connected device. Whether relaxing at home or on the go, Firework's mobile-first approach ensures users can engage in meaningful conversations with dedicated experts whenever and wherever they please.

Native Intent Offering Supports Non-Latin Alphabets & Uses Natural Language Processing Across 133 Non-English Languages 

Demandbase, the Smarter GTM™ company that uses AI to help B2B organizations hit their revenue goals, today unveils a groundbreaking multi-language intent solution that supports 133 languages, including non-Latin alphabets. Leveraging advanced Natural Language Processing (NLP), this innovation empowers B2B organizations to capture accurate intent signals from global markets, thereby accelerating revenue generation and sales alignment.

Considering that 46.1% of content on the internet is written in non-English languages, this significantly expands the company's intent offering. And as the first provider to offer non-English intent across such an expansive list of languages, Demandbase is helping customers identify genuine buying signals from wherever their target market is in the world.

"We're thrilled that Demandbase is now offering multi-language intent because we've seen how powerful Demandbase intent is in our English-speaking markets. Now we can tap into the significant Italian search volume and web traffic we've been seeing, and our marketing manager in Brazil will be over the moon to have Portuguese available," said Marcelo Lima, brand marketing coordinator at Comau do Brasil.

With non-English intent, Demandbase is supporting the most widely used online languages in the world, including Arabic, Danish, French, German, Hebrew, Hindi, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Spanish, Swedish, and more. This solution also offers multibyte support, which means it understands non-Latin letters. Additionally, it uses natural language processing (NLP), which means it understands context and relevance so the platform will not only be able to score one intent behavior over another, but also minimize false positives while maximizing accuracy.

"Demandbase loves to innovate based on customer feedback," says Brewster Stanislaw, chief product officer at Demandbase. "We have listened to our growing international customer base and have delivered an incredible addition to our global Account Intelligence. This means that our customers can now target as precisely in non-English-speaking markets as they've been accustomed to in English-speaking markets, making their marketing and sales decisions more accurate and effective. It also means less waste in go-to-market efforts, increasing efficiency in time, budget, and resources."

Demandbase already processes 1+ trillion English intent signals per month, and this addition of non-English intent represents hundreds of billions of new signals available to customers. This means that Demandbase can now act as the global intent data supplier for its customers, using its nearly 550,000 English and non-English keywords to drive more efficient and personalized sales and marketing motions across global markets.

Also of note, non-English intent will be fully utilized by the Demandbase Piper B2B DSP. This will significantly increase the number of intent-based advertising impressions that can be served in global markets. This makes all Demandbase campaigns even more targeted toward buying groups and ensures that digital marketers worldwide can benefit from increased advertising efficiency.