• New Darktrace/Cloud™ solution now available via the AWS Marketplace; provides a real-time, architecture-based view of cloud environments so businesses can easily and quickly act against evolving threats and misconfigurations, and strengthen compliance.

Darktrace, a global leader in cyber security AI, today unveiled a new Darktrace/Cloud™ solution based on its unique Self-Learning AI. The new solution provides comprehensive visibility of cloud architectures, real-time cloud-native threat detection and response, and prioritized recommendations and actions to help security teams manage misconfigurations and strengthen compliance. When combined with insight from Darktrace solutions for network, email, apps, zero trust and endpoint, Darktrace/Cloud provides a deeper, contextualized understanding of the risks and threats currently facing an organization's digital estate.  

According to a recent report, "Gartner^® anticipates over 99 percent of cloud breaches will be based on a customer error, account takeover or misconfiguration until 2027"^[1]. Cloud environments are constantly evolving so security professionals need to increase the level of visibility while keeping up with changing compliance, risk and security requirements. The rise of cloud-native technologies including containers, Kubernetes and microservices also require new tools and techniques for detecting and responding to known and novel threats.

"Unlike static cloud security tools that provide snapshots of a specific point in time, Darktrace/Cloud is real-time, all the time. Our Self-Learning AI continuously learns patterns between workloads, assets, policy configurations and identities to provide a dynamic view of cloud architectures. We analyze the entire cloud stack from data to control plane, combining an understanding of architecture and network with a new flexible, scalable deployment model," said Jack Stockdale, Chief Technology Officer, Darktrace. "Our innovative approach to cloud security is built on more than a decade of leadership in Cyber AI that is already protecting our customers' critical business areas from network and email to operational technology."

Available today, the new capabilities in Darktrace/Cloud include:

• Comprehensive visibility and architecture modeling for insights into the constantly changing nature of cloud environments. This visibility is constructed dynamically from configuration, network, users and identity and access management (IAM) data. Darktrace establishes patterns of life for cloud resources, identities, and services to understand who has access to what and how. This is critical for detecting anomalies and unknown threats.
• Universal attack path modeling provides a dynamic view of where attackers may look to move next. Darktrace brings together real-time cloud data and a deep understanding of your cloud environment with a platform approach that provides insights about risks from other covered areas of the business (e.g., network, email) to highlight potential attack paths and prioritize important assets to secure.
• Unique real-time and cloud-native threat detection and response that provides a dynamic view of known and novel threats within the cloud. Darktrace combines deep cloud attack path knowledge with real-time anomaly and threat detection through cloud-native autonomous response actions, such as detaching a policy from a user or removing a workload from a security group.
• Prioritized cloud posture management that starts by examining cloud configurations against common compliance frameworks. Where misconfigurations are detected, Darktrace provides a prioritized view of what to fix first, based on a risk profile generated from security and business context. Guided steps can be provided to help teams proactively address these before they become a significant issue.
• Cost discovery to provide a better understanding of cloud resource allocation. This helps teams contextualize their cloud resources according to security and business priorities.
• Communication and collaboration capabilities to streamline workflows between security teams and DevOps teams. Tickets can be created on demand, teams can communicate directly via messaging platforms, and alerts and anomaly detections can be sent to Security Information & Event Management (SIEM) or Security Orchestration, Automation and Response (SOAR) products and the Darktrace Mobile app so they can be alerted on the go.
• Flexible deployment options include an agentless deployment by default so organizations can be up and running in minutes. Teams can use the dynamic architectural view and risk context to decide where to deploy agents for enhanced real-time actions and deeper inspection.

Sykes Cottages, a cloud-native travel agency platform in the UK, has experienced significant growth in the last five years and has relied on the cloud to help them scale throughout this period.

"When it comes to cybersecurity, having visibility and an understanding of what you've got and your risks is critical. If I don't know it's there, I can't protect it," said Jonny Mattey, Head of Cybersecurity, Sykes Cottages. "Having a holistic, live view of our cloud environment enables us to work pragmatically and use AI to cut down management time so that we can address security risks and improve our resilience."

The new Darktrace/Cloud solution is now available on Amazon Web Services (AWS) through the AWS Marketplace, a curated digital catalog that makes it easy for customers to find, buy, deploy, and manage the third-party software they need to build solutions and run their business. Darktrace and AWS have been collaborating since 2017 to help organizations secure their AWS environments. Darktrace protects AWS environments for organizations around the world including Sunwest Bank and ProPhase Labs. Darktrace is an AWS Security Competency Partner and is part of the AWS ISV Accelerate program.

"Security is job zero at AWS," said Paddy Fitzpatrick, Director – Independent Software Vendors, UK & Ireland at Amazon Web Services. "As the threat landscape continues to evolve, the availability of AI-based tools like Darktrace/Cloud on the AWS Marketplace will help customers to gain increased visibility, and respond more effectively to security risks and threats."

Darktrace first extended its Cyber AI capabilities to cloud environments in 2016, applying its world class algorithms to granular network traffic. Darktrace/Cloud was recently named Cloud Security Product of the Year for Large Enterprises by Computing Magazine in its 2023 Cloud Excellence Awards.

aiOla, a global leader in speech recognition technology, today announced a new partnership with Cloocus, a renowned digital transformation provider, to bring aiOla's innovative AI offerings to companies across South Korea.

The strategic alliance aims to combine aiOla's advanced speech-driven AI platform with Cloocus's expertise in digital transformation, data analytics, and cloud consulting. Together, the companies will deliver transformative AI solutions tailored to South Korean enterprises looking to streamline operations, boost productivity, and gain data-driven insights.

"The world's largest corporations are eager to implement cutting-edge AI capabilities, but doing so can be an immense challenge," said Amir Haramaty, CEO of aiOla. "With aiOla's intuitive and ready-to-deploy solution, enterprises can achieve immediate value and accelerate their AI adoption journey. We're thrilled to collaborate with an industry leader like Cloocus to bring our technology to their network of clients, who can benefit greatly from integrating Generative AI into their workflows."

Regardless of an organization's digital journey, data quality is crucial for their success. Although speech is a widely used form of communication, it often struggles to effectively capture data due to challenges related to business-specific jargon, accents, intonation, language understanding, and background noise. aiOla has the ability to adapt digital and paper processes into speech-driven systems for multiple languages, including Korean. This transformation allows businesses to realize value in a matter of weeks.

"aiOla's speech technology is unmatched in its ability to streamline workflows and generate insights through natural conversation," said Steve Hong, CEO of Cloocus. "Their platform can also quickly onboard new use cases within hours and easily scale as needed. We're thrilled to offer their innovative AI solutions to our network of over 800 clients and equip them with leading-edge capabilities that maximize efficiency and productivity."

South Korea has emerged as a global hub of technological innovation and advanced AI capabilities. This partnership brings together two leaders in AI and digital transformation to drive the next wave of disruption for South Korean businesses across electronics, automotive, ship building, environmental technology, chemicals and other industries.

Quick Custom Intelligence (QCI), a leading name in the field of business intelligence solutions, is delighted to announce the appointment of Alicia Hawkins as the company's new Gaming Business Intelligence Manager. With a remarkable 14-year track record in the gaming industry, Alicia brings a wealth of experience, expertise, and innovative insights to the very dynamic QCI team.

Alicia Hawkins commented, "QCI beautifully bridges technology with business operations, and as customers gain a passion for data-driven decision making and leverage data for business optimization, I have the privilege of embarking on this journey with them. I am excited to join the exceptional leadership team at QCI as the Gaming Business Intelligence Manager."

Forrester Consulting Uncovers 505% Return on Investment with Amperity through Recent Total Economic Impact Study

Amperity, the leading AI-powered enterprise customer data platform (CDP) for consumer brands, today announced more than 50% of its customer base has adopted Amperity for Paid Media. The rapid adoption of this new application of Amperity demonstrates the important role first-party data will play in informing paid media strategies.

Since its launch in May 2023, Amperity for Paid Media has used industry-leading ad connectors and first-party data to deliver more than 11 billion unified customer profiles each day. These are delivered to the ad platforms of Amperity customers, across a range of industries, including retail, quick-serve restaurants (QSR), consumer packaged goods (CPG), travel and hospitality, sports teams and leagues, and financial services.

Marketers and digital agencies continue to struggle to find a way to measure digital and in-store transactions to deliver highly personalized campaigns and optimize their budget spend - which is where Amperity excels. Brands using Amperity for paid media are experiencing the following results:

• 3X conversion rate using unified customer profile lookalike audiences over third party audiences
• 85%+ match rate across major ad platforms
• 30% onboarding savings
• 5x increase in ROAS (Return on Ad Spend)
• 94% savings in data management and stitch processing
• 70%+ reduction in marketing timelines

The elimination of third-party cookies and the ever-changing data privacy laws have ushered in a new era of challenges and opportunities. The days of relying solely on legacy methods to identify, retain, and acquire customers are gone. To stay ahead of the game and ensure brands are getting the most out of their largest spend channels, it's critical that brands tap into their own first-party customer data to maximize every campaign dollar, especially in this macro economic climate.

"Today, we find ourselves at the epicenter of a marketing revolution. The tides have shifted and the old ways of acquiring and retaining customers are giving way to a new era of data privacy and consumer-centricity,” said Barry Padgett, CEO at Amperity. “In Q1 of next year, Google is going to disable 1% of third party cookies and fully remove them by Q3. This poses a massive challenge for brands across the board. But within this challenge lies immense opportunity. At Amperity, we’ve taken it upon ourselves to lead the charge and help brands and agencies navigate this shift.”

To quantify the impact Amperity is having on paid media, the company commissioned Forrester Consulting to conduct a Total Economic Impact™ (TEI) study and examine the potential ROI enterprises may realize by deploying its CDP. To construct the TEI study, Forrester interviewed five Amperity customers, identifying the benefits, risks, and outcomes experienced while using the company's customer data platform for paid media and combined the results to form a single composite organization. According to the study, the composite organization not only experienced a 505% ROI, but also experienced the following benefits over three years:

• $3.4 million incremental increase in net operating revenue from effective messaging
• $3.8 million incremental increase in net operating revenue due to targeted paid media spend
• 25% increase in productivity impact of more efficient campaign preparation and execution resulting in a $1.3 million savings
• $4.5 million savings in paid media spend from deduplicating customer records

Amperity has become the customer data platform of choice for leading brands across numerous industries, most recently selected by First Hawaiian Bank, Forever 21, Palace Resorts, Shiseido America, and Virgin Atlantic. These brands join longtime users of Amperity including Alaska Airlines, Brooks, DICK’s Sporting Goods, Reckitt, Seattle Sounders, SPARC Group, and Wyndham Hotels & Resorts.

Primer Technologies, an AI/ML technology firm specializing in building and deploying decision-ready AI, today announced it has joined NVIDIA Inception, a program that nurtures startups revolutionizing industries with technological advancements. 

Primer offers trusted AI solutions to the U.S. government, strategic allies, and large enterprises. Powered by its proprietary natural language processing (NLP) technology, Primer's solutions enable leaders, operators, and analysts to access and analyze their unstructured data sources to make better-informed and more confident decisions faster.

By joining NVIDIA Inception, Primer will have access to NVIDIA's technology and technical expertise, including the latest GPUs to efficiently handle extensive language models, such as large language models (LLMs) and domain-specific models. This collaboration will help Primer rapidly deliver best-in-class AI solutions to customers and allow it to work with fellow industry-leading experts and companies.

"We are thrilled to join NVIDIA Inception. In collaboration with NVIDIA and other AI-centric companies, we plan to bring the power of AI-driven innovation to customers and help them stay competitive in dynamically changing global environments," said Sean Moriarty, CEO of Primer.

In June 2023, Primer announced it raised a Series D round with a first close of $69M to accelerate company growth. The collaboration with NVIDIA is one of many efforts to bring Primer's AI solutions, including its flagship platform, Primer Delta, to a larger audience.

Blues, a leader in IIoT technology enabling global connectivity solutions, today announced its partnership with industrial-focused connectivity and hardware manufacturer, RAKwireless. Blues' Notecard is now available across RAKwireless' extensive portfolio of WisBlock modules, sensors and enclosures, simplifying global cellular connectivity for IIoT solutions.

IIoT products are often stalled by complex physical design features and incompatibility between connectivity options. Together, Blues and RAKwireless will provide global customers with a simple and pre-configured cellular IIoT solution, Blues.ONE, and a composable WisBlock interface board, RAK13102. Interchangeable components make it easy to adjust, tailor and refine IIoT solutions and connectivity options, even for less technical users.

"Our partnership with RAKwireless is revolutionary for IIoT advancement, bringing together Blues' scalability, security and simplicity, and the unique modularity of the WisBlock ecosystem. With Blues' Notecard, RAKwireless' Blues.ONE and RAK13102 will simplify programming for engineers, allowing them to streamline IIoT product deployment," said Brandon Satrom, VP of Developer Experience and VP of Product at Blues. "It's now easier than ever to build cellular IIoT solutions using bundled coverage and data in over 139 countries."

The simplified IIoT development process enabled by Blues and RAKwireless will allow customers to quickly deploy devices for individual use cases including industrial equipment monitoring and asset tracking. With cellular and LoRa options, RAKwireless and Blues customers around the world can rapidly create IIoT solutions that support wireless harmonization. 

"Blues' Notecard and RAKwireless' WisBlock solutions offer a simplified and seamless IIoT connectivity solution that bypasses traditional complexities. This partnership accelerates prototyping and provides users with a holistic solution that enables smooth transitions across regions," said Ken Yu, CEO at RAKwireless. "The adaptability of Blues' technology and the assurance of backup connectivity ensures that our users can experience uninterrupted IIoT connectivity."

Digital medicine pioneer aims to revolutionize life sciences and healthcare data synthesis through AI-driven data connections and collaborations with clinical-grade compliance.

Betteromics which has developed a clinical-grade compliant Software-as-a-Service platform that empowers life sciences professionals with the latest AI and computational techniques, announced that it has raised $20 million in a Series A financing led by Sofinnova Partners and Triatomic Capital, with participation from SHAKTI.

The company's Omics AI Cloud platform, which can be deployed privately, eliminates data silos, allowing users to analyze multi-modal, multi-omics data in one place. It reduces risk and increases velocity from data generation to AI-powered insights.

The financing will expand the Betteromics team, and scale marketing and sales efforts to life science companies, ranging from startups to the largest enterprises.

The company’s top executives — Angela Lai as Founder and Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Chetan Patel as Chief Technology Officer, and Jack Menzel as Chief Product Officer — were integral in building transformative infrastructure that powers products at Google and GRAIL.

Lai said, “The industry has succeeded in finding ways to measure every omic and every analyte, but traditional methods and legacy systems have kept that data in silos, failing to unlock its immense potential. We've solved that.”

Betteromics was founded in 2020 with a mission to enable scientists, researchers, and clinicians to understand and gain insights from massive amounts of data using advanced computation and AI techniques. The Omics AI Cloud streamlines the creation of knowledge graphs, integrating and connecting data with emerging standards and ontologies from disparate silos. The platform is tailored to a range of users: from diagnostic and therapeutic product developers to biotech manufacturers needing real-time quality monitoring.

Designed with compliance at its core, the Betteromics platform is certified to ISO 9001 and ISO 27001, SOC2 Type II and HITRUST i1, so that from day 1 users can ensure traceability and reproducibility for all data and analysis performed, allowing clients to operate their data knowing there are rigorous protocols in place for their most valuable and sensitive data assets.

Jeff Huber, Partner at Triatomic Capital, said: "The most meaningful application of AI technology is in life sciences. The Betteromics team is uniquely positioned with their translational experience from building the lab, data, clinical, and machine learning platform that powered the largest clinical studies ever done to reduce risk and increase velocity from data generation to AI-powered insight for life sciences companies of all sizes."

Edward Kliphuis, Partner at Sofinnova Partners, said: "Betteromics uniquely merges data science and human expertise in life sciences. The team brings together a rare combination of outstanding developers, data experts, and AI mavens with deep experience in the life sciences. Their groundbreaking approach to leveraging computational techniques on multi-omics datasets promises to bring unprecedented new insights and is poised to transform healthcare as we know it."

• The company’s technology, which removes the engineering complexity around AI systems for image analysis, will initially assist medical professionals

• Founder co-created Madbits, a deep-learning image-analysis start-up that was acquired by Twitter

L’école AI, creator of ÉO, a “machine teaching” technology that removes the engineering complexity around deep-learning systems for computer vision, announced that it has raised 3 million USD in Seed funding from Sofinnova Partners. The funds will be used to develop the company’s proprietary technology, which will be rolled out to medical professionals and researchers, enabling them to create bespoke AI systems to assist in their area of expertise. In addition, the financing will fuel the expansion of the team, accelerate product development and structure business efforts. Also participating in the round are notable business angels including Preston-Werner Ventures, the fund started by co-founder and former CEO of GitHub, Tom Preston-Werner.

“We're building a user interface for AI so anyone can create and benefit from their own personalized AI assistant,” said Louis-Alexandre Etezad-Heydari, Co-Founder and President of L’école AI, which means "AI school" in French. “We also are creating a system that will open possibilities for secure collaboration between organizations.”

Etezad-Heydari co-founded Madbits, a deep-learning image-analysis start-up, with Clément Farabet in 2013. A year after its founding, Madbits was acquired by Twitter, where the two entrepreneurs ran Twitter Cortex, an internal team that built a Deep Learning platform to power recommendation systems, search, ranking and filtering at Twitter.

Kim Nilsson and Jonathan Alexander Brown teamed up with Etezad-Heydari to perfect the AI development framework for computer vision that initially inspired Madbits, and the three founders set off with the goal to make creating computer vision models simple enough for non-engineers.

“L'école’s technology is designed to democratize machine learning by enabling life science researchers and other non-machine learning experts to utilize tailored computer vision systems, thus accelerating life sciences research,” said Edward Kliphuis, Partner at Sofinnova Partners. “The focus on digital medicine is a logical entry point,” he noted.

“We’re starting with a focus on health care and life sciences because we want to make a positive impact right away,” said Jonathan Alexander Brown, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer. “With Sofinnova's support, we are confident we have the right skills to partner with researchers and clinicians in these tightly regulated markets.”

Farabet, an investor in L’école, is an AI pioneer. Currently VP of Research at Google DeepMind, he spent six years as a senior executive at NVIDIA, working on its autonomous vehicles and the company's data science platform. Farabet is also famous in the AI world as one of the creators of Torch, a machine learning framework that provides a simple and flexible interface for building and training deep neural networks.

L’école AI counts a number of other AI pioneers among its investors, including Nicolas Pinto, head of Deep Learning at Apple, Clément Delangue, Co-Founder and CEO at Hugging Face.