Leena AI, a recent Y Combinator graduate focusing on HR chatbots to help employees answer questions like how much vacation time they have left, announced a $2 million seed round today from a variety of investors. Company co-founder and CEO Adit Jain says the seed money is about scaling the company and gaining customers. They hope […]
View More Fresh out of Y Combinator, Leena AI scores $2M seed roundCategory: natural language processing
Ultimate.ai nabs $1.3M for a customer service AI focused on non-English markets
For customer service, Ultimate.ai‘s thesis is it’s not humans or AI but humans and AI. The Helsinki- and Berlin-based startup has built an AI-powered suggestion engine that, once trained on clients’ data-sets, is able to provide real-time help to (human) staff dealing with customer queries via chat, email and social channels. So the AI layer […]
View More Ultimate.ai nabs $1.3M for a customer service AI focused on non-English marketsForethought looks to reshape enterprise search with AI
Forethought, a 2018 TechCrunch Disrupt Battlefield participant, has a modern vision for enterprise search that uses AI to surface the content that matters most in the context of work. Its first use case involves customer service, but it has a broader ambition to work across the enterprise. The startup takes a bit of an unusual […]
View More Forethought looks to reshape enterprise search with AIKlarity uses AI to strip drudgery from contract review
Klarity, a member of the Y Combiner 2018 Summer class, wants to automate much of the contract review process by applying artificial intelligence, specifically natural language processing. Company co-founder and CEO Andrew Antos has experienced the pain of contract reviews first hand. After graduating from Harvard Law, he landed a job spending 16 hours a […]
View More Klarity uses AI to strip drudgery from contract reviewObserve.AI raises $8M to use artificial intelligence to improve call centers
Being stuck on the phone with call centers is painful. We all know this. Observe.AI is one company that wants to make the experience more bearable, and it’s raised $8 million to develop an artificial intelligence system that it believes will do just that. The funding round was led by Nexus Venture Partners, with participation from MGV, Liquid 2 […]
View More Observe.AI raises $8M to use artificial intelligence to improve call centersSiri is now trained to recognize your local, weirdly named small businesses
Getting directions to the nearest Starbucks or Target is a task Apple’s virtual assistant can handle with ease. But what about local businesses with names that Siri has never heard, and might mistake for another phrase or the user misspeaking? To handle these, Apple has created libraries of hyper-local place names so Siri never hears […]
View More Siri is now trained to recognize your local, weirdly named small businessesAmazon patents a real-time accent translator
Amazon has been granted a patent for an audio system that detects the accent of a speaker and changes it to the accent of the listener, perhaps helping eliminate communication barriers in many situations and industries. The patent doesn’t mean the company has made it, but there’s also no technical reason why it can’t do so.
View More Amazon patents a real-time accent translatorGoogle Docs gets an AI grammar checker
You probably don’t want to make grammar errors in your emails (or blog posts), but every now and then, they do slip in. Your standard spell-checking tool won’t catch them unless you use an extension like Grammarly. Well, Grammarly is getting some competition today in the form of a new machine learning-based grammar checker from […]
View More Google Docs gets an AI grammar checkerDialpad dials up $50M Series D led by Iconiq
Dialpad announced a $50 million Series D investment today, giving the company plenty of capital to keep expanding its business communications platform. The round was led by Iconiq Capital with help from existing investors Andreessen Horowitz, Amasia, Scale Ventures, Section 32 and Work-Bench. With today’s round, the company has now raised $120 million. As technology […]
View More Dialpad dials up $50M Series D led by IconiqFacebook’s AI researchers task ‘tourist bots’ with finding their way in NYC
Facebook is getting guide bots to help tourist bots explore Hell’s Kitchen in a virtual New York City. It’s not just for kicks either, a new research paper published today by FAIR is looking to examine how AI systems can orient themselves and communicate observed data better than humans can. The setup for Facebook’s “Walk […]
View More Facebook’s AI researchers task ‘tourist bots’ with finding their way in NYCTact $27 M Series C attracts Amazon, Microsoft and Salesforce
It’s not often you can get three cloud giants like Amazon, Microsoft and Salesforce to agree on much of anything, but today they were all part of a $27 million Series C investment in Tact.AI, a startup that has been trying to change the way sales people interact with information in CRM systems using voice. […]
View More Tact $27 M Series C attracts Amazon, Microsoft and SalesforceMachines learn language better by using a deep understanding of words
Computer systems are getting quite good at understanding what people say, but they also have some major weak spots. Among them is the fact that they have trouble with words that have multiple or complex meanings. A new system called ELMo adds this critical context to words, producing better understanding across the board.
View More Machines learn language better by using a deep understanding of words