The leader in agile market research rounds out its C-suite by appointing senior leaders as CMO, CFO and International Managing Director

A new survey from Canva reveals why they’re making AI their top priority 

• 94% plan to increase their investment in AI

• 84% say there are too many AI tools in the market

• 72% are concerned about application sprawl, adding to their complexity and security risks

• 64% say they don’t have enough IT staff to train employees

Canva, the world’s only all-in-one visual communication platform, today released new insights from more than 1,360 CIOs on their priorities, opportunities and the challenges of managing their IT amid the AI boom. The company commissioned Harris Poll to survey CIOs from the US, UK, France, Germany, Spain, Brazil, Mexico, India, and Australia to understand how they’re managing application sprawl and making decisions about workplace tools in the AI era.

The top global findings include:

• More apps are entering the workplace, but consolidation and reducing complexity are top of mind. CIOs report the pace of new apps in the market is rising globally, with 71% expecting to adopt between 30-60 new apps in 2024. With the rise in the number of new applications, application sprawl (the growth in individual applications used in a workplace) is a challenge for 72% of CIOs, with 30% being very concerned with increasing complexity, but they plan to reduce it. 51% are planning on some level of consolidation, with 24% planning for significant levels.

• IT teams are overwhelmed, making simplicity and user-friendly tools more important than ever. The need to consolidate is being driven by stretched IT teams who are facing a rapid increase in the number of apps to manage. Nearly two-thirds (64%) report that they don’t have enough staff to train employees on new apps, including safe and proper use. Forty-four percent say their teams spend more than half of their time educating employees about new technologies, leaving less time for planning, innovation and other business-critical work.

• AI is dominating the mindshare of CIOs but identifying the right tools is a challenge. Despite concerns about application sprawl, nearly all CIOs (94%) plan to increase their budget to make investments in AI apps, with two-fifths planning budget rises of more than 50%. IT leaders recognize the benefits of adopting AI, such as saving time on creative or strategic tasks (52%), helping consolidate apps (50%), and offering greater insights to guide business decisions (50%). Identifying the right solution is a challenge, with 84% saying that there are already too many AI tools available, causing confusion and overlap for employees.

• Integrating AI is high on the agenda. Nearly all CIOs (90%) agree that AI tools can dramatically improve both their role and their employees' experience, but cite integrating AI (37%), access to IT talent (33%), and data security (27%) as the most common challenges. Most seem ready to leverage the technology, with 70% saying they have firm guardrails in place to ensure safe and responsible use.

“Navigating the avalanche of new technologies designed to make business easier is proving to be harder than ever. The balancing act CIOs face is unenviable: innovate with AI but don’t contribute to app sprawl,” said Cameron Adams, co-founder and chief product officer, Canva. “Our findings reinforce that CIOs want to be agents of change and innovation by choosing technology that helps their organizations have a greater impact while consolidating cost and reducing complexity.”

Today’s CIOs are constantly on the lookout for productivity tools that fuel greater efficiencies in the workplace. Within the design and creative ecosystem, there's deep fragmentation of AI-powered tools which aren’t serving the needs of the workforce, potentially slowing down the adoption of cutting edge technologies. With the goal of empowering individuals, teams, and enterprises to create visual communication at scale, Canva introduced Magic Studio in 2023 to simplify and consolidate the best AI-powered design tools into a secure and easy-to-use platform.

Building upon their proprietary rules engine, leading SaaS business intelligence (BI) platform provider, x2Systems, Inc., has announced the launch of x2 BotSquad, a new BI platform designed to leverage cutting-edge AI-technology and advanced rule designing tools for an unparalleled level of complex BI rule automation.

Capital Will Allow for Expansion of Sales and Marketing Initiatives

Cancels $10 Million Securities Purchase Agreement with GHS Investments

Retained ThinkEquity as Financial Advisor

AiAdvertising, Inc., an industry leader in AI-powered advertising solutions, today completed the second tranche of its securities purchase agreement with Hexagon Partners, Ltd., a Texas-based investment company, for a strategic investment of $2.5 million. 

Hexagon Partners Equity Investment

On April 11, 2023, AiAdvertising entered into a securities purchase agreement with Hexagon Partners, Ltd. for a strategic investment of $5.0 million and potentially up to $9.25 million. The investment by Hexagon Partners was structured as the purchase of newly designated Series I Preferred Stock of the Company that converts into AIAD’s common stock at a ratio of 1 to 400. In addition to the initial $5.0 million investment, the transaction provided an option for two additional tranches totaling another $4.25 million investment, with a total blended underlying as-converted common share price that represents an aggregate investment at a premium to the closing price of AIAD’s common stock. The $2.5 million second tranche transaction closed on January 30, 2024, and completes the investment.

Securities Purchase Agreement Terminated on January, 30 2024

On March 28, 2022, the Company entered into purchase agreement with GHS Investments, LLC, a Nevada limited liability company, to buy from the Company, up to $10,000,000 worth of the Company’s registered common stock, $0.001 par value per share from time to time. From March 28, 2022, through January 30, 2024, the Company sold an aggregate of 259,661,078 shares of common stock at an average price of $0.007 per share for gross proceeds of approximately $1.79 million under the agreement. On January 30, 2024, the Company terminated the purchase agreement with GHS Investments.

ThinkEquity Hired as Financial Advisor to list on a National Exchange

On January 12, 2024, AiAdvertising engaged ThinkEquity LLC, a boutique investment bank, to act as AiAdvertising’s financial advisor to list to a national exchange.

"We are privileged to extend our partnership with Hexagon Partners, and we celebrate their continued confidence in our company,” said Jerry Hug, CEO of AiAdvertising. “The new investment will enable us to focus on further development of our AI-powered targeting solutions to generate more engaging, higher-impact campaigns that drive results for our clients. In addition, with the new investment from Hexagon to propel our sales efforts, we believe we will reach cashflow breakeven in the near-term. While we have valued our relationship with GHS Investments, we believe our improving business metrics will allow us to raise capital more efficiently than in the past, and consequently, we have cancelled our $10 million Purchase Agreement with GHS.

“We are also excited to partner with ThinkEquity to explore listing our shares on a national exchange, which will represent a significant milestone for the Company. As we leverage our strong momentum to focus on delivering superior results to our clients, being listed on a national exchange increases corporate visibility, improves liquidity, and raises awareness of AiAdvertising in the financial markets. We look forward to working with the team at ThinkEquity for a successful uplisting,” concluded Hug.

GroupBy Inc., a SaaS-based eCommerce search and product discovery leader, is transforming year, make, and model search with the launch of its new AI-powered Fitment™ product. With this technology, GroupBy is expanding its ability to service online stores that sell automotive parts, tires, industrial and machinery supplies, electronics, and many others with vast product catalogs and databases that require exact specifications or fitments. For decades, this market has seen little to no search technology advancements, prompting GroupBy to develop the Fitment product, which utilizes the same powerful Google Cloud Discovery AI technology that powers its eCommerce Search and Product Discovery Platform.

Providing relevant product and part results from an extensive product inventory that includes year, make, and model has proven problematic for many online sellers. The reason for this, depending on the industry, is that a given part can fit tens of thousands of products. Additionally, unsophisticated UI tools complicate the buyer experience, prompting buyers to take upwards of more than 10 actions before finding the right product part or ultimately abandoning the search.

GroupBy’s AI-powered Fitment enables buyers to find specific product parts directly from a search bar query and carry that experience into browsing, navigation, and recommendations. Parts returned are guaranteed to fit the queried product, eliminating cumbersome drop-down menus and configurators. This drastically reduces friction in the buying process, ensuring customers get to the right products in the fewest steps possible.

Powered by Google Cloud Discovery AI, GroupBy’s Fitment solution optimizes the search experience for both buyers and internal merchandising teams. Built on a next-generation Google Cloud search engine and trained on vast global and industry-specific datasets, it provides users access to the most relevant search results that are guaranteed to fit every time. The AI can handle misspellings, calculate the viability of the result in real-time, and eliminate the need for business rule creation.

Additionally, GroupBy’s Fitment solution can identify intent and contextual meaning behind a search query to determine the difference between year and model or even short-form searches like ‘Chevy’ or ‘Stang,’ ensuring the accuracy and relevance of search results. GroupBy’s next-generation Fitment technology provides online retailers access to superior AI functionality that eliminates consumer product findability frustration with a focus on generating revenue gains.

“For years now, retailers with complex catalogs that sell cars, automotive parts, industrial manufacturing or machinery supplies have struggled to provide their customers with a seamless product findability experience,” says GroupBy CEO Roland Gossage. “The lack of search innovation in this market has forced customers to sift through numerous pages or utilize complex UI tools like drop downs, filters, or widgets creating long click journeys which range anywhere from eight to 30 clicks. With every click that customer has a 7% less chance of purchasing the product they intended to buy. Our AI-powered Fitment solution, which utilizes Google Cloud’s search engine, has been developed to eliminate the complexity and frustration from product part search delivering relevant and exact-fit results for conversational searches. Additionally, shoppers can perform product part searches for conversational terms like “Chevy”, ambiguous models like “91 911” (for a 1991 Porsche 911), or long-tail keywords, easily from within the search box to return exact fit parts. We are seeing an AI-tech revolution that is finally beginning to take place and those who leverage AI today, quickly and efficiently, will be winners in the eCommerce marketplace in the near future.”

GroupBy to Host Fitment Panel Discussion

To introduce its new Fitment™ product and discuss how next-generation technology drives revenue for B2B companies, GroupBy is hosting a panel discussion on Wednesday, January 31, at 1 p.m. EST, 10 a.m. PST. The webinar, “AI-Powered Year, Make, and Model Fitment Search: Guarantee the Right Product & Fit Every Time,” will demonstrate how AI-first Search and Product Discovery is modernizing eCommerce by solving complex search use cases like fitment, where customers must search by year, make, and model to find the correct parts.

During the panel, GroupBy CEO Roland Gossage will be joined by Master B2B co-founder and B2B expert Bryan Beck to discuss long-time pain points within B2B eCommerce, consumers’ evolving expectations, and how AI-first solutions can help solve challenges with existing fitment solutions. Attendees will discover how GroupBy’s new, AI-powered Fitment product can deliver results guaranteed to fit directly from the search bar, leading to revenue-generating shopping experiences that boost product findability, customer purchase confidence and online revenue.

GroupBy’s next-generation eCommerce Search and Product Discovery Platform powered by Google Cloud Discovery AI powers the world’s most relevant and highly converting B2B and B2C eCommerce sites. By leveraging the power of true AI, the platform delivers relevant, buyable and hyper-personalized search results optimized for revenue. This all-in-one platform includes all vital enterprise eCommerce product discovery functions, including data enrichment, search and browse, recommendations, merchandising, and analytics and reporting. By using AI to solve search issues at the root, GroupBy’s platform drastically reduces manual curation and intervention; customers routinely go from thousands of search rules to just one or two upon launch, freeing up merchandising teams to focus on revenue-generating activities and further improve the customer experience.

With the proliferation of deepfake AI technology able to create believable videos, realistic-looking photos that deceive viewers, and documents that appear legitimate but aren’t, digital media authenticity leader Attestiv has updated its online platform to help organizations battle deceptive media. Simple to use, Attestiv’s enhanced detection tools are among the fastest and most reliable solutions to evaluate the legitimacy of digital materials.

According to the World Economic Forum, deepfake online content facilitated by generative AI has increased exponentially. “In 2022, 66% of cybersecurity professionals experienced deepfake attacks within their respective organizations,” and experts predict that “as much as 90% of online content may be synthetically generated by 2026.”

These are serious threats to industries such as banking, insurance, real estate, news & media and healthcare, all sectors that demand the highest levels of integrity, security and compliance.

Launched in March 2020, Attestiv utilizes patent-pending, AI-based analysis and tamper-proofing of digital media, enabling organizations to discern what is real, altered or fake. New generative AI detection guards against photos created through popular text-to-photo frameworks.

Through its updated online dashboard or via APIs that easily integrate into existing applications, Attestiv rapidly analyzes digital assets from any source, making it the ideal solution to protect organizations against fraud, loss and reputational damage. Attestiv’s cloud framework operates at scale, enabling customers to validate the authenticity of digital media either through discrete analysis or integrated and automated into their existing systems.

To thwart the growing threat of fraud and AI-generated deepfakes, Cabrella, a company specializing in providing integrated insurance solutions to high value parcel shippers, recently started using Attestiv. “The authenticity of documents, photos and supporting materials is a growing and critical concern for high-value parcel shippers. Bad actors are using these new technologies to better deceive business shippers, causing significant harm to their bottom line. The growing threat of GenAI led us to proactively engage Attestiv’s solution to battle digital fraud to protect our customers.” said Benjamin Meskin, CEO of Cabrella.

“With the explosion and commoditization of generative AI deepfakes, it is hard for most of us to fathom what 2024 has in store in terms of digital fraud and misinformation,” said Nicos Vekiarides, CEO of Attestiv. “Whereas deepfakes began by infiltrating social media, the time is now for businesses to take action so they do not become the next victim of this new breed of fraud. Attestiv’s flexible solutions make us the go-to validation partner in this era of digital manipulation.”

The Nashville-based company, whose software is used to manage in-person events like concerts and corporate conferences, has hired execs in five key areas while adding project management, logistics and inventory capabilities to its platform

LASSO, the software platform for managing live events, announces the appointment of five veteran software industry executives to leadership positions within the company: Julie Edwards (Vice President of Customer Success); Christy Petrosso (Sr. Vice President of Product and Data); Danielle Porter-Condon (Vice President of Marketing); Kevin Wilson (Vice President of Technical Operations); and Anthony Zhang (Vice President of Sales).

The appointments continue a pattern of momentum for LASSO, which grew 450% over the past three years while expanding its product suite and catching the attention of industry watchers. In 2023, LASSO added project management, logistics and inventory capabilities to its platform, which already included tools for event scheduling, onboarding, time tracking, travel, payroll management, and a Crew Marketplace. It also launched a mobile app, was named a top workplace by BuiltIn and included on the Deloitte Fast 500 and Inc 5000 lists.

LASSO’s success is being driven by an increase in consumer spending on live events. “Anything live, anything experiential is just going through the roof,” said Jessica Reif Ehrlich, a Bank of America analyst who labeled the dynamic as “funflation” in a September research note. According to Emergen Research, the worldwide event management software market reached a value of $7.43 billion in 2022. Emergen projects that the market will experience a Compound Annual Growth Rate of 12.8% through 2032, when it will be valued at $24.45 billion.

The new executives hired by LASSO come from a handful of successful startups based in the Southeastern United States. Edwards and Wilson were at BoomTown in Charleston; Petrosso was at Vizbii in Charleston; Porter-Condon was at Built Technologies in Nashville; and Zhang from a number of successful SaaS companies, including SalesLoft in Atlanta. The majority of LASSO’s team is based in the Southeast. The company also boasts a 45% female team, well above the technology industry average.

“We’re excited to add Julie, Christy, Danielle, Kevin and Anthony to our leadership team,” said Clay Sifford, CEO of LASSO. “They are proven software industry leaders with long track records of growth and company success. Over the past year we’ve worked incredibly hard to expand our platform to include the tools our customers need. The response thus far has been very positive, and we look forward to building on this momentum in 2024.”

2024 State of Identity Fraud Report highlights Synthetic Identities, Biometric Spoofing and Counterfeit ID fraud incidents are on the rise

Nearly half of businesses reported a growth in synthetic identity fraud, while biometric spoofs and counterfeit ID fraud attempts also increased, according to the 2024 State of Identity Fraud Report, released today by AuthenticID, a global leader in identity proofing and fraud prevention solutions. With identity fraud skyrocketing across multiple industries globally, the report offers a pulse check for business and consumer identity fraud. It delves into identity verification challenges and the cutting-edge technology that can fight the sophisticated fraud facing both consumers and businesses. 

The report, created in partnership with PEAK IDV, delves into the most prevalent fraud tactics observed in 2023 and emerging tactics that may shape 2024. The report uses internal proprietary data anonymized and analyzed from AuthenticID’s ID verification, biometric authentication, and watchlist technologies. In addition, this proprietary data is paired with insights from AuthenticID’s annual fraud surveys conducted in Q4 2023, surveying both fraud and technology professionals as well as consumers in North America.

The increases in identity-based fraud demonstrate the continued threats and preferred threat vectors of fraudsters. Among the noteworthy increases included in the report:

• 50 percent of businesses reported growth in synthetic fraud
• Biometric spoof fraud attempts tripled from 2022 to 2023
• Counterfeit ID fraud attempts are on the rise, specifically in the telecom and wireless industry: AuthenticID’s platform detected over 927,000 fraudulent IDs in 2023, an 80% increase from 2022.

Over 30% of businesses reported a growth in data and security breaches from 2022 and 2023, with the impact of synthetic fraud reaching beyond traditionally-impacted financial sector, to ecommerce, gaming, and more.

“In 2023, identity crime led to record levels of both breaches and business attacks,” said Blair Cohen, AuthenticID Founder & President. “These attacks and identity fraud crimes can lead to high economic losses and a loss of customer trust. Businesses need to do more than just stay vigilant; they must stay ahead of bad actors who now employ incredibly sophisticated technology with relative ease.”

Consumers also reported heightened levels of identity-focused attacks, with most consumers reporting being approached by bad actors at least six times per year via email, phone calls, texts, or social media.

“Protecting identity isn’t just good business, it’s crucial for individual identity security,” said Chris Borkenhagen, Chief Digital Officer/Information Security Officer at AuthenticID. “Bad actors continuously shift strategies to find and exploit any new opportunities, maximizing the data and money they can pull from their victims. Being aware of these trends, and how to stay agile enough to minimize the damage, is crucial for a business’ identity proofing strategy.”

AuthenticID will continue to drive innovation forward in its technology to ensure companies can stay ahead of changing fraud techniques and regulatory requirements while delivering best-in-class customer experience.