groundcover, a cloud-native solution that revolutionizes observability with eBPF, is proud to announce the launch of its observability platform for Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (Amazon EKS) environments, with a native integration with the Amazon EKS console. This important milestone will allow organizations using Amazon EKS to install groundcover on their managed Kubernetes clusters instantly, as an Amazon EKS add-on, verified and managed by Amazon Web Services (AWS).              

groundcover's Amazon EKS add-on works seamlessly with Amazon EKS clusters, simplifying the process of ensuring clusters are secure and stable while also reducing the manual work needed for installation, configuration, and updates. This marks yet another expansion for groundcover in its supported cloud environments and further advances its mission to reinvent observability. By leveraging groundcover's proprietary eBPF sensor, organizations are changing the way they monitor their cloud-native environments, removing the cost barriers and minimizing resource drainage.

In addition, groundcover is now also available in AWS Marketplace, a digital catalog with thousands of software listings from independent software vendors that make it easy to find, test, buy, and deploy software that runs on AWS. This enables millions of AWS active users to easily install and start using groundcover directly from AWS Marketplace. It also provides additional confirmation of the quality and stability of the groundcover platform, while adhering to the high standards of AWS.

As applications scale and interdependencies grow, gaining detailed insights becomes vital for effective troubleshooting. Kubernetes users face the daunting task of instrumenting applications, collecting metrics, and emitting actionable logs to track down issues. This becomes even more challenging in modern microservices environments, where numerous small and distributed, independent pieces of code interact with each other. As the demand for Kubernetes observability continues to grow, eBPF has emerged as a transformative technology, redefining how applications are monitored in Amazon EKS clusters. With its unparalleled performance and seamless integration into the Linux kernel, groundcover offers comprehensive application performance monitoring without disrupting existing application code.

groundcover utilizes eBPF to create a full-stack observability platform that provides instant value without compromising on scale, granularity or cost. Its proprietary eBPF sensor was built in a performance-first mindset, harnessing kernel resources to create a cost-efficient architecture for Amazon EKS observability. By collecting all its observability data using eBPF, groundcover eliminates the need for intrusive code changes and manual labor, and the need to deploy multiple external agents. This streamlined approach not only enhances the coverage and depth of observability but also eliminates the unexpected effects of the observability stack for the time-critical application code, as all data collection is done at the kernel-level, with minimal performance overhead, and without configuring side-cars or agents.

The result is an instant, super-granular visibility into what's happening within an Amazon EKS Kubernetes cluster, enabling a cost-efficient approach to observability.

"groundcover is proud to empower Amazon EKS users with enhanced insights into their applications and infrastructure using eBPF," says Shahar Azulay, CEO and Co-Founder of groundcover. "groundcover breaks the visibility-cost tradeoff, ensuring teams don't have to compromise on visibility depth to manage budgets responsibly. We've made it our mission, and now with AWS on our side, to allow teams to get the most out of their observability at a fraction of the existing cost in the market today."

Hoylu AB (publ), a leading provider of digital collaboration and project management solutions, today announced the appointment of Kjartan Berge Steinshamn as its new Chief Financial Officer (CFO), effective December 13, 2023. Kjartan Berge Steinshamn succeeds Karl Wiersholm, the company's CFO since 2016.

Kjartan Berge Steinshamn brings a unique blend of expertise, having held positions in Corporate Finance at Bulk Infrastructure Group AS and, most recently, Investment Associate at Viking Venture AS, a B2B software investor company focused on Nordic SaaS companies. This diverse background equips him with deep insights into financial strategy and investment in the tech sector, particularly in the rapidly growing Nordic SaaS market. Kjartan Berge Steinshamn’s appointment marks a strategic step for Hoylu as it continues to expand its services and solidify its position in the global SaaS landscape. Kjartan Berge Steinshamn holds a Master of Science in Industrial Economics and Technology Management from Norges teknisk-naturvitenskapelige universitet (NTNU).

Kjartan Berge Steinshamn will oversee the company’s financial operations, including accounting, investor relations, and strategic financial planning.

Karl Wiersholm has been instrumental in Hoylu’s growth and success over the past seven years. Under his stewardship, the company has achieved significant financial milestones and strengthened its position in the SaaS industry. Hoylu extends its deepest gratitude to Karl Wiersholm for his dedication and contributions and wishes him the best in his future endeavors.

Truls Baklid CEO of Hoylu AB, said, “We are thrilled to welcome Kjartan Berge Steinshamn to our executive team. His experience from Viking Venture working with several SaaS companies and strategic planning will be crucial as we continue to innovate and grow. We are confident that Kjartan Berge Steinshamn will help us achieve new heights in the ever-evolving SaaS landscape.”

Kjartan Berge Steinshamn commented, “I am excited to join Hoylu at such a pivotal time. I look forward to contributing to the company’s growth trajectory and working with the team to build on its strong financial foundation.”

Rconnect and Regnology ChatBot Plans Introduced at 30th Annual Regtech Convention

Regnology, a software provider with a focus on regulatory reporting solutions, today unveiled two new product offerings, Rconnect and Regnology ChatBot. These innovative solutions mark a significant leap forward for the regulatory industry, leveraging automation and AI to unite regulated financial institutions and financial regulators on a single, streamlined communications platform.

Rconnect serves as a game-changing platform that revolutionizes how regulated financial companies interact with financial regulators. Assisted by AI, Rconnect streamlines communication between both parties, eliminating manual efforts and reducing the risks associated with misinterpreted regulations. Furthermore, Rconnect accelerates the clarification process for understanding and implementing new regulations efficiently.

Rconnect streamlines and automates the communication between the regulators and the financial institutions they regulate. The solution provides greater visibility, control, and efficiency for all parties across the full lifecycle of regulatory reporting communication. Rconnect leverages AI to deal with unstructured communication and efficiently answer queries.

Rconnect, which will officially be rolled out in Q2 2024, is solution agnostic and available to both Regnology clients and non-clients.

In addition to Rconnect, Regnology introduced its an AI-powered support tool, Regnology ChatBot. In an era where regulators publish subjective regulations that can lead to confusion among industry players, Regnology ChatBot steps up as a reliable source for immediate interpretation of new regulatory guidelines. This empowers both regulators and those they regulate to gain prompt clarity on their obligations while ensuring compliance within stringent timelines.

The benefits of Regnology ChatBot extend beyond external applications. Internally at Regnology, the chatbot enables support teams to gain deeper insights into customer issues by swiftly analyzing user interactions during problem encounters, leading to an overall improved customer experience. The chatbot will be available in late Q1 2024.

"Our mission at Regnology is to unite regulators and regulated entities to mitigate risk and help prevent financial crises," said Rob Mackay, CEO of Regnology. "With Rconnect and our Regnology ChatBot, we are breaking down barriers that hinder effective communication in today's complex regulatory landscape."

Linda Middleditch, Chief Product Officer at Regnology, shared her insights on these new products saying, "Our Regnology ChatBot transforms how our clients navigate through ever-evolving regulatory frameworks. It provides real-time information critical for businesses seeking rapid comprehension of new mandates."

One platform to rapidly go from GenAI idea to product, leveraging automated machine learning with human feedback to build high-quality GenAI applications.

This week, Verta Inc, the AI Model Management and Operations company, launched the Verta GenAI Workbench, an all-in-one platform to accelerate the Generative AI (GenAI) builder’s journey from idea to product. Geared toward GenAI product builders of all technical levels, the Workbench utilizes a unique combination of automated machine learning and human feedback, enabling builders to rapidly experiment with and refine custom Large Language Model (LLM) solutions for their GenAI applications.

Verta CEO Manasi Vartak says, “The GenAI product development process today is a lot like the Gartner hype cycle: teams start at the peak of inflated expectations based on media excitement or a quick ChatGPT exploration, but rapidly enter a painful valley of disenchantment when they attempt to make the use case work consistently, with high quality, and at reasonable cost. Exiting the valley requires a combination of smart prompting, standing up alternative open-source and proprietary models, data labeling, and infrastructure building, things that most teams don’t have the expertise or tools to do. We built the Verta GenAI Workbench to help teams go from GenAI hype to GenAI productivity as quickly as possible.”

As with traditional machine learning, producing high-quality results from GenAI requires significant trial and error on prompts and models. The Verta GenAI Workbench does this heavy lifting for them. It supports an always up-to-date variety of open-source LLMs like Llama 2, Mistral, and Falcon alongside proprietary models like OpenAI’s GPT models and Google’s PaLM. Similarly, it leverages state-of-the-art prompting techniques and GenAI itself to create “Starter Kits” with strong baseline prompts for a variety of use cases. The result is a single platform that can help builders easily choose and, when needed, switch between different providers and prompts without negatively impacting their GenAI application.

An additional differentiator praised by Workbench users is the GenAI Leaderboard, which ranks model and prompt configurations on different dimensions like application-specific quality, cost, and latency, enabling end users to pick the right solution for their specific needs. This also allows non-technical domain experts to steer the results of the application, during product development and also after launch.

“Companies of all sizes are scrambling to integrate GenAI into their businesses; many GenAI experiments are at risk of never coming to fruition due to lack of expertise,” said Mark Rostick, Vice President and Senior Managing Director at Intel Capital. “Verta’s new product simplifies the GenAI app building process significantly, enabling teams to pressure test and build their ideas faster and more efficiently.”

Verta's commitment to revolutionizing AI technology is not new. Last year, the company was named in Gartner Inc’s “2022 Cool Vendors™ in AI Core Technologies — Scaling AI in the Enterprise.” This accolade underscored Verta's ability to automate the delivery, monitoring, governance, and scaling of AI models, addressing a crucial need for enterprises to optimize their AI strategies. Building on this legacy, the Verta GenAI Workbench represents the next leap in Verta's journey of AI innovation.

Lemonade (the “Company”), the digital insurance company powered by AI and social impact, announced it has named two new members to its Board of Directors, Deb Schwartz and Dr. Samer Haj-Yehia, effective immediately. The newly named Directors will succeed departing Directors Irina Novoselsky and Silvija Martincevic.

Ms. Schwartz is a seasoned financial leader skilled at enabling companies to innovate, grow and scale. She is currently the Chief Financial Officer of H1, a leading healthcare data technology company whose mission is to connect the world to the right doctors. Deb previously served as CFO at Cameo, the celebrity video shoutout pioneer, and at Bustle Digital Group, the digital media provider. Deb spent more than a decade as an equity analyst with Goldman Sachs and Credit Suisse, and holds an MBA from Harvard University, and a BA/BS from the University of Pennsylvania.

“I’ve focused much of my career on developing business and financial strategies that drive growth and innovation,” Schwartz noted. “I look forward to working with Daniel, Shai, and the Lemonade Board and leadership team as the Company continues on its path to profitability.”

Dr. Haj-Yehia brings extensive executive and board experience at various conglomerates across multiple industries in Israel and the US. Until October 2023, Samer was the Group Executive Chairman of Bank Leumi, Israel’s largest and oldest bank. Under his leadership since 2019, Leumi became the largest and most efficient bank in Israel, grew its income and profitability, and underwent technological transformation and innovation. While in the US, Samer practiced investment management, trading, and fintech innovation at leading financial institutions, including at Fidelity. He also served as a member of public and government committees, teaches finance and fintech at Reichman University, and is a guest speaker at international conferences. Samer holds a Ph.D. in economics from MIT, and an MBA (summa cum laude), LLB, MA (magna cum laude) in economics, and BA (magna cum laude) in accounting, all from Hebrew University. He is a CFA charterholder.

“I’ve long shared Daniel and Shai’s belief that the power of technology and artificial intelligence have the ability to transform industries, especially centuries-old industries like insurance,” said Dr. Haj-Yehia. “Lemonade is doing exactly that, and I’m honored to join the company’s Board of Directors at this pivotal time.”

The two new Board members replace departing Directors Irina Novoselsky and Silvija Martincevic, both of whom have recently undertaken CEO roles in other companies. During their three years on Lemonade’s Board, both Irina and Silvija contributed their exceptional insight and depth of experience, and their service to the Company is greatly appreciated. Earlier this year, Irina was named CEO of Vancouver-based Hootsuite, a leading social media management tool provider, while Silvija was recently named CEO of Sydney-based Deputy, a leading provider of workforce management technology.

"Deb and Samer bring exceptional knowledge and expertise to the Board and company—Deb being a true leader and trailblazer in business, healthcare, and the ever-evolving media landscape; and Samer, an incredibly esteemed economist who has broken barriers throughout his career," said Daniel Schreiber, Lemonade co-Founder and co-CEO. "Their values and breadth of experience will help Lemonade continue to grow and innovate. We’re also hugely grateful to Irina and Silvija for their years of service to our Board and Company, especially during a period of transformative growth."

Along with Deb and Samer, Lemonade’s current Board is composed of Lemonade co-Founders Daniel Schreiber and Shai Wininger, as well as Michael Eisenberg (Partner, Aleph) and Shu Nyatta (Founder/Managing Partner, Bicycle Capital).

VCI Global Limited (“VCI Global”, or the “Company”) today announced that it has signed an agreement with Playstack Limited (“Playstack”), a games developer and publisher based in the UK, to acquire the IP and assets of Playstack’s unique AI based-AdTech platforms. The platform uses AI alongside gamification of digital marketing assets and new disruptive technologies, such as augmented reality to maximize brand engagements on mobile with global applications across corporate, consumer and large audience event opportunities.

At a time where the limitations of traditional brand engagements and advertising have been stretched and relatively taxing on budgets, this AI based-augmented reality gamification marketing platform capitalizes on gamification of digital marketing assets to maximize and vastly improves digital engagement on mobile phones. The technology provides synergistic platforms, explicitly designed to provide powerful mobile engagement and revenue generation.

The number of smartphone users in the world has been projected to be as high as 7 billion in 2023, depending on which research organization’s data is used for reference. Mobile phones therefore undoubtedly offer a vast global reach.

This AI enhanced-augmented reality gamification marketing platform has achieved numerous downloads and brand interactions in the UK alone. It has been used with great success by major brands in its UK pilot, including Warner Bros, Sky, Samsung, Virgin, Heineken, Unilever, Danone, UK banks, as well as Team GB and several good cause charities. This proves its ability to connect with, and monetize users in a new innovative way, leading to higher retention, engagement and activation rates.

These platforms will significantly enhance VCIG’s customer engagement and monetization, and act as the central conduit in its digital engagement strategy and growth plans, allowing VCIG to collect valuable customer data on spending behaviors and insights such that VCIG will drive consumer activations in its newly partnered businesses with hotels and other related organizations.

“The integration of these AI brand engagement platforms by VCIG is a creative and innovative digital mechanism that will not only help VCIG drive user engagement, retention and purchasing, but also enhance our technology offering, enticing additional users and brands to engage with VCIG. It uniquely taps into the current consumer interest in AI and the Metaverse, allowing users to engage in a gamified world with brands at its core. We will be able to leverage the additional functionality as it provides valuable insights for tracking consumer behavior and a consumer experience unlike that provided by other media platforms. Focused on data driven customization of user and brand interaction, VCIG will offer a vast new digital engagement vertical in brand management, making the platform a measurable and transparent marketing tool, a marketer’s dream,” said Dato’ Victor Hoo, Group Executive Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of VCI Global.

The AI-Powered Company Enters its Next Phase of Growth, Accelerating its First-to-Market Lead and Expanding its Board of Directors

Qortex, an Intelligent Video Analytics (IVA) company brands and enterprises use to turn video content into meaningful and enriching experiences that drive business outcomes, today announced it has raised $10 million in a round led by GFT Ventures along with other investors including Silicon Road Ventures. The company plans to use the funds to expand its talent and technology in support of client and market demand.

IVA technology allows for monitoring and analyzing a large volume of video and transforming that input into intelligent data for quick decision making. According to Mordor Intelligence, the AI video analytics market is expected to reach $18.11 billion in 2023 and grow at a CAGR of 33% to reach $75.35 billion by 2028. During that period, North America and sectors like media and retail are expected to be big drivers.

Founded by Zack Rosenberg and James Altschuler, Qortex's patent-pending, AI-enabled, technology makes it possible for users to rapidly and accurately search, categorize, correlate and curate video "moments" at scale – regardless of volume, time, language or context. Today, hundreds of companies are utilizing Qortex for its On-Stream™ "Moments Marketing" capabilities. However, the latest capital round will also allow the company to introduce its superior IVA to other markets, allowing those companies to:

• Deeply understand and apply IVA to drive more predictable success at scale
• Place advertising in real-time while matching the advertisements to individual video moments such as actions, events, feelings or visuals of people and products across Web Video, CTV and In-Game experiences
• Drive the best video-viewing experiences
• Monetize across channels and moments
• Comply with IAB and other industry standards

In conjunction with the investment news, Qortex announced three appointments to its Board of Directors: Jeff Herbst, Co-founding Managing Partner of GFT Ventures who spearheaded the round; Mark Pedowitz, the former Chairman and CEO of the CW Network and Head of Pine Street Entertainment; and Sid Mookerji, Managing Partner and Founder of Silicon Road Ventures.

"The IVA space has traditionally been comprised of companies addressing the security sector in areas such as CCTV footage. Qortex is applying its proprietary AI-powered IVA to the underserved media and advertising vertical, and quickly establishing itself as the market leader in this regard," said Herbst. "We believe AI will disrupt every industry and vertical – advertising is no exception. Our investment in Qortex is the result of our strong conviction in the company's opportunity to capture a huge share of the AI-powered advertising market, and to innovate across the IVA landscape for years to come."

"What you watch is a window into who you are. With IVA we can deeply understand the actions, events, feelings, products and more within the video," said Rosenberg. "Never before has this been possible with any scale, speed or accuracy within the media realm. We aim to create something entirely new that allows anyone in media, advertising and entertainment to harness content and leapfrog its competitors using AI. If you can win these moments, the possibilities of success are endless."

Prior to the new year, Qortex will add several more leaders to its team and enhance its On-Stream product as it prepares to introduce new IVA offerings in 2024.

Event management platform Planned announces today its product expansion from sourcing & booking to attendee management, becoming the first all-in-one modern solution for corporate events.

With its new suite of attendee management features, Planned now makes it possible for anyone to manage a corporate event from sourcing to registration, in one simple, modern platform.

Years ago, Cvent launched the first registration tools for trained, professional corporate event planners. Although these tools remain well-adapted for the largest, most complex events such as trade shows, they are overly complex for the majority of events, especially the ones booked by occasional planners.

Up until now, these users were stuck managing their attendees' RSVPs, hotel room reservations, and dietary preferences manually or through disconnected 3rd-party tools that would not connect to their company's stack. This process is not only time-consuming for planners stuck repeating tasks in multiple tools, it also makes it impossible for procurement teams to monitor attendance and room block attrition.

Planned's new features include:

• AI room block configurator: after sourcing and signing their hotel on Planned's marketplace, planners can set up their room block tracking in one click. Planned uses AI to read the hotel contract and automatically extract the room information, attrition goal, and cut-off date for planners to monitor through their event dashboard.
• Room reservation website builder: allowing planners to build a mini, branded website in minutes, for attendees to manage their own room reservation. No more playing middleman every time a guest wants to make a change to their reservation!
• An RSVP email and form builder: allowing planners to build branded invitations, collect attendees' dietary preferences, and manage all attendee-related information in one central dashboard.
• Automated tracking and reminders: to avoid hefty hotel penalties and F&B charges, planners can rely on Planned's automated reminders. Attrition progress is made front and center, and unresponsive attendees receive automated follow-ups to make sure no money is left on the table.

"We want to support all event planners in their mission to bring people together. There's no reason why corporate planning tools shouldn't be as great as the ones we all use to plan our personal events and trips," says Marc-Antoine Bonin, CEO and co-founder of Planned.

"Anyone in a company can be asked to plan an event, but not everyone knows how to navigate all the steps and policies. We offer a simple tool that guides planners and allows procurement teams to deploy cost-saving-focused processes. That's how we save our clients hundreds of thousands of dollars a year."

As the next-generation event management platform, Planned contributes to accelerating the digital transformation of the Meetings & Events industry. With an average 9.6 CSAT, Planned helps procurement deploy their M&E program at scale, across small and large events, saving an average of 13% on its clients' multi-million dollar event budgets. As a result, the company has seen explosive year-over-year customer growth.