HCLTech will train more than 18,000 experts to help businesses implement Google Cloud’s generative AI models and capabilities

HCLTech, a leading global technology company, and Google Cloud announced the expansion of their strategic partnership to help enterprises leverage generative artificial intelligence (AI) and develop joint solutions powered by Google Cloud’s generative AI technologies.

HCLTech is actively using Google Cloud’s large language models (LLMs) to develop generative AI capabilities for its clients across three core domains: industries, enterprise functions, innovation and technology modernization. HCLTech’s AI platforms and solutions will utilize Google Cloud's full suite of enterprise generative AI products and services, including Vertex AI, Generative AI Studio, Model Garden and Generative AI App Builder, along with the underlying LLMs that power these Google Cloud AI innovations.

HCLTech will establish a Google Cloud Generative AI Center of Excellence (GenAI CoE) to develop joint solutions that will enable clients to unlock the value of data and realize the full potential of generative AI. The GenAI CoE will draw from AI expertise embedded in HCLTech Cloud Native Labs in London, Dallas and Noida (India).

In addition, HCLSoftware, a global leader in enterprise software solutions, plans to accelerate its own digital transformation by adopting Google Workspace, Duet AI for Google Workspace and Developers, and is deploying Vertex AI for improving customer success and customer support for its clients.

“Generative AI will usher in a new era of innovation across industries. This presents an opportunity for enterprises to double down on digital transformation. I am excited about expanding our partnership with Google Cloud to help enterprises accelerate responsible adoption of GenAI,” said Kalyan Kumar, Chief Technology Officer and Head, Ecosystems, HCLTech.

“Generative AI has the potential to revolutionize a wide variety of business processes and even transform entire industries,” said Kevin Ichhpurani, Corporate Vice President, Global Partner Ecosystem & Channels, Google Cloud. “These new investments and resources from HCLTech will help enterprises more quickly implement, scale and capture value from generative AI and help them transform their businesses in bold and responsible ways.”

HCLTech will continue to help clients accelerate their digital transformations by bringing Google Cloud’s leading technologies to large-scale organizations around the world. Through this expanded partnership, HCLTech will rapidly train more than 18,000 people on Google Cloud generative AI technologies and innovate new solutions to help businesses improve efficiency, enhance employee experiences and maximize value from their business data.

HCLTech offers a unique set of end-to-end AI capabilities from chip development to business process optimization. Leveraging strategic partnerships with Google and many others, HCLTech is paving the way for the adoption of generative AI across industries

Accelerates AI Leadership in Global Talent Acquisition and Recruiting

Veritone HR Solutions delivers powerful suite of AI-enabled recruitment solutions to enhance operational efficiency, automation and data-driven hiring decisions for employers

Veritone, Inc. a leader in enterprise AI software and services, today announced it has closed the acquisition of Broadbean, a global leader of software as a service (SaaS) technology that makes talent acquisition and engagement more efficient, from CareerBuilder.

The close of the acquisition is expected to significantly strengthen Veritone's AI-driven human resources solutions suite, building on the Company’s previous acquisition of PandoLogic. With Broadbean’s distribution software, extensive network and robust data set integrated with Veritone’s programmatic and conversational AI technology, Veritone HR Solutions will deliver the benefits of advanced recruitment marketing technologies to customers worldwide. Integrating programmatic capabilities into Broadbean’s distribution platform will allow employers of all sizes to benefit from job distribution at the individual job level, save time on posting their jobs to individual publishers and pilot these capabilities on a smaller scale.

Total consideration paid was $52 million in cash on a cash and debt-free basis, subject to certain adjustments in the purchase agreement. Before synergies, the acquisition is expected to be immediately additive to Veritone’s operations and, on a standalone basis, is expected to generate SaaS and GAAP revenues of over $35 million on an annualized basis, of which approximately $30 million is subscription-based with attractive margins.

“The Broadbean acquisition accelerates Veritone’s mission to disrupt and modernize attractive market verticals -- including the global talent acquisition and staffing technology and services market, which is forecasted to be $196 billion by 2028¹ -- by leveraging AI-based automation, optimization and intelligence at global scale,” said Ryan Steelberg, President and Chief Executive Officer of Veritone. “The lifeblood of AI is data. The combination of Broadbean’s data set of over 5 billion job advertising performance data points from its installed base of over 3,000 customers and 100 ATS partners and Veritone’s AI-enabled recruitment technology solutions, positions Veritone to further enhance recruitment insights for customers and scale AI-driven enhancements across its business.”

George LaRocque, market analyst and founder of WorkTech, commented, “This acquisition is further evidence of what we’re seeing in the market as organizations seek to leverage the possibilities of AI.”

Steelberg added, “As we take advantage of Broadbean's extensive integrations, we envision many exciting attribution and down-funnel opportunities that we will continue to investigate, invest in and ultimately bring to market.”

Google Analytic users now granted access to Fastbase revolutionary leads add-on 

Fastbase, web analytics company, announces a follow up press release regarding the revenue potential of announcement made May 13 2023 about Google Analytics users have now access to the company's revolutionary WebLeads add-on that can generate leads from website traffic and provide surprisingly high interest and growth opportunities.

Fastbase leads add-on for Google Analytics allows users to see the companies that visit their website, the pages they visit, and the contact information for the decision makers at those companies. This invaluable information can help businesses better understand their target audience and tailor their marketing efforts to drive more qualified leads and ultimately increase sales.

"It´s a valuable tool to Google Analytics users," said Rasmus Refer, CEO. "By providing access to company information and decision maker contact details, businesses can significantly increase their sales and growth opportunities. As a result, we expect that we could see increased revenues of $4 to 5 million."

Fastbase have added access for Google Analytics users at a defining moment in the tech market. According to Fidelity's Sector Portfolio Manager "virtually every company in every industry is now looking to use technology to get closer to its customers, innovate more quickly" and that "companies that provide the technology to aid in these transitions could be potential beneficiaries of this trend. Firms such as Salesforce, HubSpot, Twilio and Microsoft have supported this investment thesis."

Don't miss out on the opportunity to take your sales and growth to the next level. Check out Fastbase's leads add-on today and see the results for yourself.

The world's most iconic brands use Aware IQ to protect the bottom-line, power top-line growth, and harness the knowledge of employees. 

Today, Aware announced the launch of Aware IQ, an artificial intelligence data platform, purpose-built to understand the unique human context of workplace conversations at scale. Customers using Aware IQ and its portfolio of applications gain real-time visibility into every aspect of their business, including the risks and opportunities that they were previously unaware of.

Every business is human, and it sends signals. Employees spend approximately 50% of their day using collaboration platforms such as Slack, Teams, and Zoom, sending over 18 trillion messages in 2022. Aware customers unlock insights from that collaboration data to understand employee needs, which have often been ignored, misunderstood, or only partially captured through ineffective, outdated surveys.

The world's most valuable brands recognize that a differentiated customer experience begins with the employee. Companies must now deliver a compelling employee experience to grow and sustain a profitable, world-class brand. According to the Gallup's State of the American Workforce report, companies with an engaged workforce are 21% more profitable.

Scaling Human-Centered Intelligence across the enterprise
Aware IQ's groundbreaking interpretive natural language processing (NLP) and computer vision (CV) models enable companies to utilize secure, personalized predictive, and generative AI models. These models identify patterns of behavior and risk, generating contextual intelligence for executives to manage governance, risk, compliance, security, legal, and HR requirements associated with workplace communication data.

"Six years ago, we set out to build the most accurate, state-of-the-art AI data platform to help brands understand and empower their most valuable asset — their people," said Jeff Schumann, co-founder and CEO of Aware. "Today, we're proud to say that Aware is used by the world's most innovative brands to power the employee experience, validating our investment and approach to artificial intelligence. We're excited to help even more companies realize the unimaginable benefits derived from building an engaged, empowered workforce."

Aware uses a variety of techniques to analyze heterogenous digital conversations, including NLP and CV neural network modeling — models trained by a diverse, in-house data science team with the express purpose of interpreting the myriad ways communication occurs in the modern workplace.

This allows Aware to identify individual and organizational patterns of behavior in the context of modern communication. That context is often missed by legacy software and traditional surveys. Aware's models are trained on a proprietary dataset of tens of millions of conversations, which results in more accurate and representative insights than generic datasets. Additionally, Aware's models are refreshed frequently to ensure accuracy and relevance, which is critical to gaining valuable insight in quickly changing workplaces. This approach has resulted in Aware's models being two times more accurate than other leading solutions.

"At Aware, we take a proactive approach to responsible AI. Our rigorous approach to AI model development includes obtaining a representative and unbiased sample of digital workplace communication, cleaning and anonymizing the content, as appropriate, to further debias the data; selecting and applying the appropriate ML model; and using industry-standard, out-of-sample performance testing to gauge accuracy of the resultant model," said Jason Morgan, PhD., VP, Behavioral Intelligence. "The result of this approach are the industry's most accurate, targeted models, providing representative, transparent and trustworthy insight into the employees' workplace experience."

diDNA, a leading advertising technology platform for the publisher ecosystem, has been awarded Google Certified Publishing Partner status. This further cements diDNA as a trusted Google partner and thought leader, helping to continue their mutual goal of providing publishers the resources they need to grow their businesses across the open internet.

The Google Certified Publishing Partner program is an exclusive program for highly vetted ad technology businesses that gives content creators the confidence to know that they're working with an expert in the field. Acceptance into the program is limited to partners with a proven track record of success helping publishers succeed.

diDNA joins the program having demonstrated expertise in web monetization, video monetization, real-time bidding, and more. As publishers continue to face increasing challenges generating incremental revenue, diDNA has adapted their product offerings to better serve the needs of the publisher ecosystem. They continue to offer their full-service monetization solution while bringing products to the market that give publishers more flexibility, more transparency, and more ownership over their inventory. Products include Viewify, a tool designed to increase ad viewability to generate incremental revenue, and Smart Video Demand, a video monetization solution that uses machine learning technology combined with a marketplace of programmatic, Direct, and PMP deals that maximize the quality of advertising inventory to generate significant revenue lift for publishers.

With this latest recognition from Google, diDNA looks forward to continuing their mission by offering more innovative products tailored towards helping publishers succeed at every stage of their business growth journey.

"We have always taken a quality over quantity approach when building the diDNA Network. This has allowed us to become a market leader in video demand with some of the highest quality inventory within the Google network of partners," said diDNA CEO and founder Deke Hooper. "We couldn't be more proud to join Google's Certified Publishing Partner program. Over the years we've had access to several early releases, product betas, and new features within Google, and this opens up even more possibilities for us to better serve our publishers."

Providing comprehensive insight into performance through Scibids AI, the solution enables Tinuiti’s clients to make data-driven decisions about existing and future programmatic investments

Scibids, the global leader in artificial intelligence (AI) for digital marketing, today announces the launch of Scibids AI Insights Solution, in partnership with Tinuiti, the largest independent performance marketing agency across Streaming TV and the Triopoly of Google, Meta and Amazon. Offering unprecedented transparency and control over the ad decisioning process within Scibids’ AI-powered customizable algorithms, AI Insights provides media buyers with all the information they need to understand the decisions made by the AI and make smarter decisions about their campaigns.

In combination with Tinuiti’s internally-built suite of incrementality, measurement and optimization solutions, the agency worked in close collaboration with Scibids in product testing, and is the first marketing agency to leverage at scale this new solution, which delivers automated and in-depth insights into how Scibids AI analyzes and weights ad variables in the bidding process according to their impact on performance. This includes identifying in real-time campaign elements like URLs, creative, location, and time of day and analyzing their individual and combined effect in driving the expected outcome.

Insight into the efficiencies created by these variables enables Tinuiti’s trading teams to better scale campaigns, assess campaign results and optimize performance. Scibids AI analyzes across millions of variables to identify the combinations that generate the greatest impact on campaign outcomes. With more and more brands asking for greater transparency in their media buys, this new solution will greatly advance Tinuiti’s clients in pursuing their business-specific objectives, including Etsy, Converse, and Nestlé.

Geoff Litwer, VP of Programmatic & Display Media at Tinuiti, commented: "One of Tinuiti’s biggest differentiators has been our ability to be smarter and faster in analyzing the vast amount of data that our programmatic campaigns generate. This partnership with Scibids and leveraging its new AI solutions, has already proven its worth in greatly scaling KPI-specific performance for our clients."

Eric Schwartz, Managing Director, North America, Scibids said: "Technology-driven agencies like Tinuiti are ahead of the curve in providing superior campaign performance for their partnered brands. They fully understand and embrace the role sophisticated AI and customizable algorithms have to play in today's media buying landscape, and their customers have greatly benefited from the control and spend growth Scibids AI Insights has and will enable."

Connext is building the HTTP of Web3, allowing developers to build applications that are accessible by any user, on any chain, using any token.

Connext, the pioneering blockchain interoperability protocol, today announced the closure of its strategic fundraising round of $7.5 million at a $250 million valuation. The latest round brings Connext's total funding to $23.2 million. This capital will fund the setup and operation of the Connext Foundation. The foundation will play a critical role in the success of Connext, stewarding the development of the protocol and ensuring robust long-term growth of the ecosystem through development grants and funding of community-led initiatives.

The strategic round saw participation from Polychain Capital, NGC Ventures, Polygon Ventures, IOSG Ventures, Fenbushi Capital, KXVC, a_capital, No Limit Holdings, Factor, and Dokia Capital. Other Connext investors include Coinbase Ventures, Ethereal Ventures, 1k(x), #Hashed, and Scalar Capital.

Similar to how HTTP enabled the creation of the interconnected web that is widely used today, Connext makes it possible for developers to build interchain applications that can be accessed from any network and interact with funds and data on every blockchain, all at once. The underlying technology acts as a communication layer on top of existing, battle-tested infrastructure, giving users the best possible security, regardless of the chain they are on.

"In 2020, we realized that the future of web3 was going to look a lot like the internet does today: thousands of independent blockchain networks communicating with one another to create a single interconnected experience," said Connext founder Arjun Bhuptani. "We pivoted our focus towards building this future as a public good. Today, Connext enables a new era of decentralized applications that, similar to applications on the web, can interact with users, data, and funds on many blockchains all at once."

To date, over 1.2 million crosschain transactions have gone through Connext's network. Since the launch of its V2 in late February 2023, the network has grown rapidly, adding over 20,000 new users in the last month, and 35 companies actively building on top of the protocol, including Metamask, Planet IX, and DODO.

Since its formation in 2017, Connext Labs has had a long history of pioneering critical blockchain infrastructure. In 2018, Connext built the first payment-focused Layer-2 scalability system on Ethereum, used by Metamask, The Graph, and others. In 2019, the team helped create one of the first widely used DAO frameworks, MolochDAO, which garnered support from Vitalik Buterin and Joe Lubin, among others. MolochDAO has since been used as the framework for hundreds of DAOs, governing millions of dollars in value.

"The Connext protocol not only revolutionizes how developers build Web3 applications but also addresses one of the most pressing issues in the blockchain landscape - security across chains," said Joseph Lubin, Chairman at Ethereal Ventures and ConsenSys Mesh. "We firmly believe in Connext's vision and are confident they have the right team and technology to create an interconnected future for all blockchain networks."

Founding team backed by Silicon Valley's top investors ushers in a new industry standard as the first shoppable-video platform to allocate equity for creators who contribute content to the app

flavrs, a video platform that launched in September 2022 featuring high-quality shoppable recipe content from world class chefs and creators, is officially the first shoppable-video platform to provide a real stake in the company to creators through The flavrs Creator Equity Fund.

"Historically, content and technology platforms have severely undervalued creators, as the majority of the financial upside of these large and profitable companies has gone solely to the founders, early investors, and employees, despite the fact that content is often a key part of their success," says flavrs Co-Founder and CEO Alejandro Oropeza. "My co-founder, François Chu, our investors and I decided to change the rules of the game and share real value with content creators with this new fund."

With the announcement of The flavrs Creator Equity Fund, flavrs becomes the first food content platform to issue a portion of the company's shares to early creators as a reward for their contribution to the app. Just like investors, early employees and founders, creators can now secure shares in the promising early stage company that have the potential to grow in value over time. The flavrs Creator Equity Fund gives creators access to potential long-term financial upside in the company

flavrs was founded by a team of top executives and technologists with over 10 years of experience working with creators at YouTube, TikTok, Google, Facebook, Twitter and is funded by leading investors including Andreessen Horowitz, among others. With the fund, the founders and investors have pledged a portion of their ownership in the company to give value back to creators.