AI

If you’ve used a smart voice assistant such as Alexa, Siri and whatever-Google’s-smart-assistant-is-called, you’ll probably have noticed that the tech is getting smarter every day. Google can wait on hold for you, Siri can speak in a gender-neutral voice and Alexa can read you bed

Podcasting has emerged as a major billion-dollar industry, with ad revenue in the U.S. alone expected to hit $2 billion this year — a figure that’s set to double by 2024. Against that backdrop, major players in the field are bolstering their podcasting armory, with Spotify recently doli

As the jobs market remains tight (mass layoffs and hiring freezes in tech aside), companies are laser-focused on retaining staff. One of the areas they’re investing in is upskilling, which aims to teach employees new skills in departments with which they’re unfamiliar. For example, Walm

There are a number of startups working to improve trash sorting with robots. AMP Robotics is near the top of the list, coupling a picker and a conveyor belt to sort materials in large, automated facilities. The technology aims to correct human shortcomings when it comes to recycling. Too often peop

Shortly after the Amazon/iRobot news was announced on Friday morning, a colleague asked me if I was surprised. The short answer is yes and no. Yes, in the sense that the news dropped suddenly on what should have been a quiet Friday morning in August. No, in the sense that, of course Amazon is buyin

Hong Kong-based drug discovery and development company Insilico has secured fresh capital at a time that its CEO described as a “biotech winter.” The firm has raised $35 million on the heels of its last tranche in June, bringing its total Series D investment to $95 million. The new roun

Nightfall AI, a startup providing cloud data loss prevention services, today announced that it raised $40 million in Series B financing from investors including WestBridge Capital, Venrock, Bain Capital Ventures and — for some reason — athletes and celebrities including Paul Rudd, Drew

As millions of people are playing with AI-powered image-generation tools like DALL-E and Midjourney, new works of art are generated by the billions. Many of them are curiosities, some of them are legitimately incredible works of art that I wouldn’t hesitate to stick on my wall. In fact, I did

U.K. health tech startup Babylon Health is pulling in its horns in its home market, blaming challenging global and macroeconomic conditions for the termination of a couple of multiyear contracts it had inked with two NHS Trusts in England in recent years — including one from the start of 2020

Stores face new challenges in a world forever changed by the pandemic. Amazon and other tech giants are encroaching on their business. But perhaps more urgently, supply chain snarls haven’t gone away, presenting retailers with a host of inventory issues. In a March Retail Insights survey, sev

The food service industry faces steep labor, quality control and sustainability challenges exacerbated by the pandemic. According to NSF International, a product testing and certification organization, more than half of quick-service restaurant (QSR) managers found staff turnover to be an issue for

When it comes to geospatial and mapping data and how they are leveraged by organizations, satellites continue to play a critical role when it comes to sourcing raw information. Getting that raw data into a state that can be usable by enterprises, however, is a different story. Today, a Berlin-based

The Middle East has long been thought of as an oil region, but the United Arab Emirates aims to change this with an intense focus on growing the country's technology and startup scene. For the first half of 2022, the Middle East region brought in $1.73 billion in investments across 354 deals, u

Things were on the quiet side in robotland this week — and honestly, I don't mind. It can hard to catch your breath covering the industry these days. But even a category as supercharged as robotics and automation has its occasional slow weeks — and late July/early August is as good