There is always a tension inside companies about whether to build or to buy, whatever the need. A few years ago Dropbox decided it was going to move the majority of its infrastructure requirements from AWS into its own data centers. As you can imagine, it took a monumental effort, but the company believed that the advantages of controlling its own destiny would be worth all of the challenges… Read More

 Facebook is turning its attention to Canada with a new AI research office in Montreal. Google and Microsoft already have outposts in the city and countless other tech companies, including Uber, have researchers based in Canada. McGill University’s Joelle Pineau will be leading Facebook’s AI efforts in Montreal. Pineau’s research focus tends to lean heavily on robotics and… Read More

 Looker is holding its Join user conference this week, and these affairs often involve a new release to show off to customers. Today, the company released Looker 5, which they say will make it easier for employees to make use of data in their work lives. Company CEO Frank Bien believes there is a growing group of people, who need quick access to data to do their jobs. “At a high level,… Read More

 Earlier this year, Amazon’s AWS group said that it was working on bringing instance types with between 4 to 16TB of memory to its users. It’s now starting to fulfill this promise as the company today launched its largest EC2 machine (in terms of memory size) yet: the x1e.32xlarge instance with a whopping 4.19TB of RAM. Previously, EC2’s largest instance only featured just… Read More

 Yext has been known for helping businesses get all their information (like location, business hours, and such) lined up correctly on the right apps and websites — and now it’s looking to make sure the rest of the pitch is right across the Internet. Yext, which went public earlier this year, said it is launching a feature called knowledge tags to help businesses make their websites… Read More

 Apttus, the unicorn quote-to-cash vendor built on the Salesforce platform, announced a $55 million round, which is likely its final private investment on the way to an IPO. While CEO Kirk Krappe wouldn’t definitively confirm the company was going public, he did say that today’s round was about gaining the confidence of future investors. “We decided we needed a certain amount… Read More

 Heptio, the startup founded by Kubernetes co-founders Craig McLuckie and Joe Beda, today announced that it has raised a $25 million Series B funding round led by Madrona Venture partners. Lightspeed Venture Partners and Accel Partners also joined in this round, which comes less than a year after the company’s $8.5 million Series A round. Read More

 Adam Coates, director of Baidu’s Silicon Valley AI Lab, has left the company. A source confirmed the exit and Coates has updated his LinkedIn reflecting the change. Coates joined the Chinese search giant back in May of 2014 to lead a California-based team of 50 machine learning developers. Baidu has built up an established proficiency in natural language processing. While at Baidu,… Read More

 Security company Armis has found a collection of eight exploits, collectively called BlueBorne, that can allow an attacker access to your phone without touching it. The attack can allow access to computers and phones, as well as IoT devices. “Armis believes many more vulnerabilities await discovery in the various platforms using Bluetooth. These vulnerabilities are fully operational, and… Read More

 Security company Armis has found a collection of eight exploits, collectively called Blueborne, that can allow an attacker access to your phone without touching it. The attack can allow access to both computers and phones as well as IoT devices. “Armis believes many more vulnerabilities await discovery in the various platforms using Bluetooth. These vulnerabilities are fully operational,… Read More