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Google partners with VCs to host its own machine learning startup competition
On the heels of acquiring data science community Kaggle, Google is launching a machine learning competition of its own for startups. Google is targeting early-stage companies taking an innovative approach to machine learning. The competition is being run in partnership with seven venture capital firms. Read More
Michel Morvan is the CEO of The CoSMo Company, a big data service provider and insight generator. He knows how to use AI to help C-level execs make decisions and he thinks the current crop of AI is just the beginning. Morvan doesn’t believe AI will become “self-aware.” Instead, he speaks of “augmented intelligence,” robots that help us think better and make… 
Yext, the company that powers location data in search results, has revealed its IPO filing. The business will be able to join the stock market as soon as April. 
It looks like Snap’s (at least perceived) successful IPO has officially opened the window: Following Yext officially filing for an IPO this afternoon, identity management software company Okta just dropped its official filing for an IPO. 
As the legal cannabis industry grows in the U.S., competition for customers is heating up. Now, a startup called Baker Technologies has raised $3.5 million to become a “Salesforce for pot.” The company’s software helps marijuana dispensaries bring in new customers and inspire customer loyalty, without running afoul of ever-shifting regulations that govern precisely how… 
After unveiling a limited preview of Teams in November last year, Microsoft is now rolling out its collaboration and communication platform, positioned as a rival to Slack, more widely: Teams is now available, and free, for all 85 million monthly active users of Office 365, Microsoft’s suite of cloud services and apps as a web app and native apps for Windows, iOS and Android. 
Parker Conrad’s last venture at Zenefits didn’t end so well, what with his departure as CEO and the company having to re-orient itself. But he’s once again starting a company that will figure out how to build an employee system of record and management, starting off with smoothing out the process of onboarding employees and focusing on other major life events for those employees. 
LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman announced today that he’s joined the board of directors at Microsoft. This follows Microsoft’s $26.2 billion acquisition of LinkedIn last year. 
Glen Tullman doesn’t like it when someone tells him he’s sick when he’s feeling fine. It’s something he thinks his customers probably don’t want to hear, either. Tullman runs a startup called Livongo Health, which offers a blood glucose monitor accompanied with a service designed to intervene and help coach people through managing diabetes. Livongo Health helps… 
Apple Pay and Android Pay may be best known as Apple and Google’s mobile wallets, designed to expand their businesses in making payments with smartphones. But today comes an advance that underscores how both are also vying to be consumers’ virtual wallets for all e-commerce transactions. WePay, the payments company that competes against the likes of incumbents like FirstData…