Thinkific Labs Inc. , a leading platform for creating, marketing, and selling online learning products, announced today the launch of Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL)  functionality, via providers Affirm, Klarna, and Afterpay, as part of its growing suite of integrated business management and payments solutions which includes Thinkific Payments. Powered by global financial infrastructure platform Stripe, the latest functionality enables Thinkific Creators to offer credit at checkout options thereby increasing accessibility of their products to wider audiences and driving increased sales.

"Our goal at Thinkific has always been to empower our Creators to build and scale their own remarkable and successful online businesses," said Greg Smith, CEO of Thinkific. "The addition of Buy Now, Pay Later options to Thinkific Payments provides another compelling tool for our Creators, allowing them to attract more students, increase sales, and provide flexible payment solutions that align with their audience's needs."

With Affirm, Klarna, and Afterpay, students have the flexibility to pay for education over time, while Creators receive immediate payment. This allows Creators to reinvest their sales revenues into marketing efforts, fueling their growth and expanding their reach.

During extensive beta testing, by offering a convenient form of credit that lowers the purchase barriers for students, Thinkific Creators saw strong and consistent increases to sales conversions and revenue. According to Stripe data, businesses that accept BNPL services on their platform have seen an average 25% incremental uplift in sales volume.

Thinkific's integration of BNPL functionality was also shown to increase average order values, contributing to Creator's overall revenue growth. As part of its ongoing beta testing of BNPL, the Company continues to find that the average transaction size is larger with the use of BNPL features than without, meaning Thinkific Creators see larger purchases from students when the flexible payment option is enabled.

"Stripe's work with Thinkific to offer a BNPL feature means Thinkific Creators can unlock new opportunities for growth and expand accessibility to their educational products," said Sophie Sakellariadis, Product Lead for Payment Methods at Stripe. "We believe our collaboration will help Creators scale their audiences even more and supercharge sales, ultimately driving success throughout the online learning industry."

The ESG report demonstrates a continued devotion to maintaining a culture that reflects the company's core values, leading the mixed-fleet transition, managing its environmental footprint, and improving the welfare of communities across the countries where WEX operates.

WEX, the global commerce platform that simplifies the business of running a business, today published its third annual environmental, social, and governance (ESG) report. The report captures WEX’s ongoing ESG strategy and performance throughout 2022 across a team that has grown to more than 6,600 employees in 16 countries.

This report organizes WEX’s efforts around its four core strategic ESG pillars – People and Culture, Environmental Innovation, Environmental Stewardship, and Social Impact – supplemented by key governance practices.

"In the wake of changes in our economies, businesses, and communities over the last three years, WEX and our global customers and partners have continually adapted and evolved, and we aim to support them as they embrace initiatives such as transitioning to electric vehicles or educating consumers about the value of Health Savings Accounts,” said Melissa Smith, Chair and CEO, WEX. “Executing a robust ESG strategy is embedded throughout our culture, driving long-term business success while making a positive impact. Our Board of Directors and executive leadership team provide dedicated oversight, ensuring WEX's position as a responsible and successful leader."

AI Assistant Sia™ Delivers Five New Products to Accelerate SEO

seoClarity, the leader in AI-driven enterprise SEO technology, completes its 5-week launch of the industry's first AI-powered SEO Assistant - Sia™, along with five groundbreaking products that utilize its incredible generative AI capabilities.

"Sia integrates ChatGPT technology across all stages of SEO and represents a significant milestone in our commitment to helping clients get from data to results fast," said Mitul Gandhi, co-founder and Chief Architect at seoClarity. "We've seen firsthand that ChatGPT that integrates SEO data is 10x more useful to SEOs."

With over a decade of experience pushing the boundaries of what's capable in SEO with AI, seoClarity's latest releases align the power of generative AI to automate SEO tasks, scale content, and deliver accelerated results all with the security and control enterprises require.

As part of their AI rollout, seoClarity has integrated ChatGPT and LLMs across five key areas of SEO:

1. AI for On-Page SEO: Sia provides SEOs with advanced capabilities for on-page optimization, including intelligent suggestions for rewriting page titles and meta descriptions based on competitive analysis.
   
   
2. AI for Content Generation: seoClarity's Content Fusion gets a major upgrade with the introduction of generative AI to assist content teams in quickly generating topic outlines, rewriting existing content, and enabling enterprises to best capture a tone and voice based on their target audience.
   
   
3. AI for Keyword and Topic Research: Inject ChatGPT into keyword and topic research by leveraging AI to deliver a deeper understanding of the target audience and users' search journey.
   
   
4. AI for Internal Linking: Sia applies AI to the difficult challenge of internal link optimization, connecting data already in the seoClarity platform to build semantically related link clusters, optimize anchor text, and convert unlinked content across a site automatically.
   
   
5. AI for SEO Management: A scalable framework for actionable AI, SEOs can streamline routine and mundane tasks at scale, increasing productivity and saving valuable time. Sia's "if this, then that" wizard enhances efficiency in managing bulk tasks.

Its superpower lies in its ability to leverage any LLM, allowing an ease of development for future rollouts that allow clients to choose the most suitable one for each task, increasing speed and efficiency in enterprise SEO.

"Our focus is on providing enterprise-ready AI," said Gandhi. "Sia is built under the seoClarity AI Manifesto to help augment human capabilities while being secure and completely under a client's control, customized by their specific SEO data."

Clients are already experiencing the benefits of generative AI throughout these areas in the platform, with one enterprise SEO director stating, "With ChatGPT alone, I had to rewrite so many prompts, but the (platform integration) with Sia is a perfect replacement."

New CEO to focus on business growth acceleration and guiding Cloudera technology advancement to enable enterprise artificial intelligence at scale

Cloudera, the data company for trusted enterprise AI, today announced the appointment of Charles Sansbury as Chief Executive Officer.

"I am pleased to announce that Charles Sansbury has been appointed as Cloudera CEO," said Jeff Hawn, chairman of the board of directors. "In his twenty-plus years in corporate leadership roles, Charles has architected and led successful business strategies and operational initiatives that have delivered accelerated business growth. His leadership will drive Cloudera's exciting hybrid data strategy in the era of AI that enables companies to benefit from all their data."

Sansbury brings to Cloudera extensive leadership experience across the software industry. Most recently he was CEO of ASG Technologies from 2015 until its 2021 sale to Rocket Software. Prior to that, he was COO of The Attachmate Group from 2011 until its 2014 sale to MicroFocus. He was CFO of The Attachmate Group from 2006 until 2011, and CFO of Vignette from 2001 until 2006.

"I am grateful to the board for entrusting me with the leadership of Cloudera, and I am excited about the opportunity to take the company into its next phase of growth as the trusted enterprise AI company," said Sansbury. "I was drawn to Cloudera for the quality of its team, its world-class customers and its position as a technology leader delivering critical enterprise AI capabilities. With over 25 million terabytes of data under management, Cloudera guides many Fortune 1000 enterprises who are focused on implementing open data lakehouses as a major step toward their expanded use of artificial intelligence and machine learning. I am confident the company will continue to execute on its product leadership position and growth initiatives."

Revolutionary new feature leverages AI to craft email campaigns to patients to save staff time and increase practice revenue

Weave, a leading all-in-one customer experience platform for small and medium-sized healthcare businesses, today announced the launch of Email Assistant, its second AI-driven engagement product.

Now available to its 27,000+ customers, Weave's AI-driven Email Assistant provides an innovative way for healthcare providers to communicate and connect with their patients and clients. By simply inputting the themes that need to be covered in the email, Weave Email Assistant will generate the email text in a matter of seconds, which can then be edited before sending. This tool allows healthcare providers to quickly create, personalize, and automate email marketing campaigns, resulting in improved patient engagement and retention, a higher patient growth rate, and increased awareness of services offered by a practice.

“With digital marketing becoming an essential part of running a healthcare business, it’s important to provide simple and effective AI-driven solutions to our customers,” said Branden Neish, Chief Product & Technology Officer at Weave. “With Email Assistant, we reduce both the time requirement and anxiety often associated with creating an email marketing campaign. By harnessing the power of AI, we aim to empower healthcare providers to deliver exceptional patient experiences that drive patient loyalty and business growth.”

Email marketing is an essential and often overlooked marketing avenue. According to one study, email marketing generates, on average, $36 of new business for every $1 spent, and 59% of consumers say that email marketing campaigns influence their purchasing decisions.

With Concourse Labs Generative AI capabilities built on Vertex AI, Customers can Securely Adopt and Manage Public Cloud Applications 

Concourse Labs announced today the launch of its Generative AI solution, leveraging the  Google Vertex AI platform and ushering in a new era of cloud governance. Harnessing the power of generative AI, Concourse Labs is enabling businesses to expedite and scale their cloud adoption journey while maintaining robust security and compliance measures by implementing  scalable "code to cloud" automation.

In today's digital age, businesses are increasingly relying on public cloud applications to power their operations. However, the security and management of cloud infrastructure and applications can be a daunting task.

Concourse Labs is revolutionizing the way generative AI can help businesses securely implement and manage public cloud applications. With Concourse Labs, businesses can:

• Use generative AI to automatically generate secure configurations for cloud applications, helping businesses avoid human errors and ensure that their applications are always secure.
• Continuously monitor for misconfigurations that can create security vulnerabilities, helping businesses identify and fix vulnerabilities before they can be exploited.
• Automate the security compliance and governance of cloud applications, helping businesses focus on their core operations.

Concourse Labs also supports generative guardrails, policy as code, and security baselines. These features help businesses to further secure their cloud applications by:

• Establishing generative guardrails with automated policies that enforce security best practices and tailored to the specific needs of the business.
• Implementing policy as code as a methodology for managing security policies at scale, ensuring their security policies are always up-to-date and consistent.
• Defining and implementing security baselines or sets of security controls that are recommended for a particular type of cloud application.

In addition to these features, Concourse Labs can also be used to help businesses with security control design and threat modeling. Generative AI can be used to identify potential security risks and design security controls that are tailored to specific needs of the business.

For example, Concourse Labs can be used to:

• Analyze cloud applications and identify potential security risks, helping businesses prioritize their security efforts and mitigate risks before they can be exploited.
• Design and enable security controls that are tailored to the specific needs of the business, helping businesses implement security controls that are effective and not overly burdensome.
• Test security controls to ensure that they are effective, helping businesses identify gaps in their security posture and make necessary improvements.

"Concourse Labs enables security automation and audit for compliance of cloud and application infrastructure at scale," said Don Duet, CEO and Co-Founder of Concourse Labs. "With comprehensive out-of-the-box policy based on industry standards and best practice, coupled with the power of generative AI, Concourse Labs enables companies to embed and automate security checks at every stage of the cloud application lifecycle, from development pipeline through runtime, enabling scalable code to cloud automation."

"Organizations are adopting public cloud to deliver software faster than ever before while also having to ensure a strong security posture." said Philip Moyer, Global VP Artificial Intelligence Business, Google Cloud. "Generative AI represents a new era of computing – Concourse Labs is leveraging Vertex AI to empower our joint customers to accelerate cloud adoption and increase delivery velocity without sacrificing security."

Concourse Labs is a powerful tool helping businesses to secure their cloud applications. By using generative AI, businesses can automate many of the tasks involved in security control design and threat modeling, freeing up resources to focus on other areas of security.

TV+’s Automated Performance Optimization Engine makes it easier for performance-oriented marketers to optimize their CTV campaigns against mid and lower-funnel metrics

Simulmedia is upgrading its TV+ platform with Automated Performance Optimization (APO), a new feature that empowers brands to unlock their full performance potential in CTV advertising. Enabled by powerful machine learning, APO is always learning, experimenting and calibrating so that brands reach their performance goals faster and more efficiently. Unlike other black-box optimization algorithms, APO is built with transparency from the ground up — advertisers can monitor budget reallocation and performance against other conversion-based KPIs.

Most CTV campaigns are improperly optimized. Demand-side platforms offer off-the-shelf optimization capabilities and leave traders in the dark when it comes to the AI’s decision-making. Manual optimization gives more control but is tedious and time-consuming. Even the most sophisticated programmatic buyers report feeling frustrated — auto-optimization either works or doesn’t, and learning why is difficult.

TV+’s new Auto Performance Optimization feature is the latest optimization feature to hit the market, purpose-built for connected TV. The engine allows buyers to choose the metric to optimize for, from mid-funnel website visits to lower-funnel conversions, and then allocates based on parameters that yield the best outcomes. Automated Performance Optimization enables buyers to:

• See under the hood to course-correct: Automated Performance Optimization’s level of transparency is unlike any other solution, providing complete visibility into budget allocation decisions. Buyers can track APO's lift, identify top-performing publishers and dayparts, and derive insights from its decision-making to enhance stakeholder communication and learning.
• Achieve performance goals faster: By leveraging machine learning, TV+’s optimization engine analyzes web traffic and conversion patterns to maximize conversions. It continually learns, experiments, and calibrates, leading to faster achievement of KPIs.
• Track optimization against multiple KPIs: TV+’s Optimization Engine handles complex conversion funnels while optimizing for a specific metric. Additionally, it’s easy to monitor and report on the progress of the campaign across multiple action/conversion KPIs.

Getting started is easy. To optimize targeting and improve conversion rates, brands first set up the Simulmedia Pixel on their website or app. TV+ then uses this data to identify key parameters and leverage its APO to optimize the targeting and budget allocation strategy automatically. Throughout the campaign, a programmatic team can monitor the average cost per visit in TV+.

“We are very proud to release Automated Performance Optimization (APO). A lot of work went into building a solution designed for flexibility and transparency. No matter how clients define success, we can help them achieve their performance goals faster and more efficiently harnessing the power of machine learning.” - Gregorio Galletti, Product Manager, Simulmedia

“Any channel that we run in, we think of accountability, optimization, and making sure that we are using as much data as we have to make informed decisions so that our investment is as efficient as possible. This [feature] seemed like a natural extension. I believe it’s a first-mover advantage in the marketplace. It’s always appealing when you can learn before your competitors and get a head start.” - Shaun Farrar, Senior Director, Global Media at Monster

Wix Studio marks a significant evolution in web creation for agencies, delivering a revolutionary platform that combines AI-powered features, the latest design and development capabilities and seamless workflows for multi-site management to help agencies create projects with greater quality and velocity

Wix.com Ltd. , a leading global SaaS platform to create, manage and grow an online presence, today announced the release of Wix Studio, the ultimate web creation and development experience, elevating the platform for agencies and freelancers. Wix Studio builds on Wix's proven capabilities combined with the latest AI technology to provide a state-of-the-art solution, enabling the creation of advanced websites at scale. With more flexibility, the platform includes a newly-designed development and creation editor with code capabilities, multi-site management workspaces, and access to new monetization opportunities, all helping to drive efficiency.

"We have devoted the past several years to our professional audience by working closely with our agency partners, deeply understanding their workflows, and evolving our products accordingly. Now, we are introducing a completely new platform for them to build quality websites, manage all of their clients and so much more," said Avishai Abrahami, Co-Founder and CEO of Wix. "We believe that with Wix Studio we will be able to continue generating significant growth in our Partners segment. Combining our web development expertise and the power of AI to assist with complex web design projects, we're continuing our path to trailblaze the web creation industry."

Wix's recently announced suite of AI-powered web creation capabilities, as well as new responsive and code AI features, are integrated into Wix Studio. These tools simplify complex web design and content tasks and significantly help boost productivity.

Highlights of Wix Studio include:

Advanced design capabilities built for efficiency 

• Complete design control: With an intuitive canvas experience, professionals can focus on the design intent while all elements resize proportionally on any screen size by default. Additionally, they can create minimal to super complex layouts that can be customized on any breakpoint, while elements adjust accordingly.
• Responsive AI: With a click of a button, users can generate fully-responsive layouts for their designs that are automatically fitted to every screen size, powered by AI technology.
• AI text and images: Quickly generate high-quality text and images with AI.
• No Code interactions, animations, and design expressions: Designers can add advanced animations to their site without writing code and create a visually engaging and dynamic experience. Capabilities include scroll, loop, and entrance animations, click and hover interactions, custom cursor, text mask and more.
• Custom CSS: Easily customize CSS in the Wix Studio editor. Simply copy and paste into the editor and apply it to elements to create new designs, animations and interactions.
• Intuitive to learn: Empowers agencies and freelancers to create high-end websites at scale with a seamless user experience that removes any friction.
• Concurrent workflows and collaboration: Teams, designers, developers, and marketers can work concurrently and stakeholders can provide feedback, approve designs or offer suggestions effortlessly.

Workspaces for efficient client management

• One dashboard to power all projects and clients: A completely new workflow to manage clients, projects and multiple teams within one powerful dashboard, also accessible on the dedicated Wix Studio mobile app.
• Team management to work at scale: Allow teams to efficiently work on a wide range of projects simultaneously by creating and reusing apps and templates across any project. Track and manage the team's support tickets history to expedite issue resolution and stay on top of new releases and product betas.
• The client experience: Personalized client-facing dashboard and editor provides a smooth experience to collaborate. Quick-edit capabilities and a complete, customizable resource kit ensure clients can receive and maintain their websites on their own, as needed. Clients can receive updated analytics reports with important site information and performance.

Meet any client needs with advanced capabilities

• Say "yes" to any project with a more open platform: Customize websites using Wix Blocks, UI slots and custom CSS and support any tech stack and device with Wix Headless. Extend and replace Wix business logic features and flows with hundreds of APIs & SPIs. Use Data extensions to enrich built-in entities and collect and store custom information. Create advanced workflows using automation rules based on a comprehensive and rich library of triggers and actions.
• A robust code environment: Work in a professional environment using Wix online VS Code-based IDE to add frontend and backend code to a website and seamlessly integrate with Wix-made or third-party APIs. Additionally, developers can also choose to work with their preferred IDE by connecting their site to GitHub.
• Build and sell reusable applications: With Wix Blocks, professionals can create, save, reuse, and deploy highly customizable applications and widgets across hundreds of sites. Moreover, they can benefit from increased monetization opportunities with the ability to sell apps via the Wix App Market.
• AI code assistant: Create complex websites and web applications at a higher velocity with an AI-powered code assistant that helps developers write cleaner code and detects errors.

"We understand the complex nature of agencies that are often working on hundreds of projects and collaborating across multiple teams," said Gali Erez, Head of Product at Wix Studio. "Wix Studio combines the intuitiveness of the Wix Editor with cutting-edge capabilities, alongside robust integration opportunities, and advanced business solutions, to redefine how agencies build and manage websites. We're excited for this creative, flexible and efficient platform to be in the hands of agencies and freelancers, supporting them to deliver brilliance."

"The invaluable insights and knowledge we've learned working with Wix Partners over the years have been crucial to shaping the Wix platform, and today, Wix Studio is the ultimate creation and management experience for our Partners," said Michal Bignitz, VP of Wix Partners. "We're thrilled to roll out this powerful platform that addresses all of their needs from building complex projects to managing their relationships with clients all in one place."