Bret Taylor finds himself in a unique position in Silicon Valley: in just one week at age 42, he’s accepted substantial positions at two tech powerhouses.
Amazon Lex brings automated call transcript review to chatbot building
Today, at AWS re:Invent in Las Vegas, the company announced the Amazon Lex automated chat bot designer in preview, a new feature that simplifies the chatbot training and design process by bringing a level of automation to it. “We are excited to announce the Amazon Lex automated chat bot designer, a new capability that reduces […]
Bret Taylor has been promoted to Salesforce co-CEO
There has been speculation for some time that Marc Benioff was ready to step back, perhaps take the same path as Jeff Bezos and move to chairman of the board. The scuttlebutt had it that Bret Taylor was in line for a promotion. Seems Benioff wasn’t ready to go out to pasture just yet, but […]
EU retail giant Schwarz Group snags security startup XM Cyber for $700 million
Schwarz Group, an EU-based retail company, announced today that it has acquired Israeli security startup XM Cyber for $700 million. It may seem like a strange partnership, as Schwarz is best known as the owners of the Lidl and Kaufland supermarkets, but the company believes that extending into security will ultimately help benefit its retail […]
Ericsson to acquire cloud communications company Vonage for $6.2B
Ericsson, an international networking company, decided it needed a dose of modernization and this morning announced its intent to acquire cloud communications company Vonage in a $6.2 billion deal. With Vonage, Ericsson is getting a more modern approach to communications that includes a cloud contact center, communications APIs (like Twilio’s) and a voice over internet […]
Neu.ro announces zero emissions model building solution
As companies increasingly move to take advantage of machine learning to run their business more efficiently, the fact is that it takes an abundance of energy to build, test and run models in production. Neu.ro, an early-stage full-stack MLOps solution, is building a greener approach. Today, the company announced a zero emissions AI cloud solution […]
What open source-based startups can learn from Confluent’s success story
Confluent’s approach of growing from open source to commercial product has worked out well — the company defied conventional wisdom and still ended up thriving.
Pentagon announces new cloud initiative to replace ill-fated JEDI contract
The Pentagon announced a limited request for bids for a new cloud initiative today that replaces the cancelled $10 billion, decade-long JEDI contract initiative. You may recall (or not) that it previously ran a winner-take-all bid it had dubbed JEDI (short for Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure). The new initiative goes by the much less catchy […]
Data center companies CyrusOne and CoreSite acquired in deals totaling $25B
It’s been quite a week for data center industry consolidation in the U.S. Two companies, CyrusOne and CoreSite, announced deals valued at $15 billion and $10 billion, respectively. It is unusual to see two companies in the same industry announce such large acquisitions on the same day, but that’s what happened on Monday. Let’s start […]
Seven years after last venture investment, Mixpanel scores $200M Series C
Mixpanel was a hot startup in 2014 when it nabbed a $65 million Series B on an $865 million valuation, a sizable B round and valuation for those days. Today, seven years after that announcement, the company finally has a C round, a $200 million investment on a $1.05 billion valuation from Bain Capital Tech […]