Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been at the forefront of technology innovation, changing the structure of business growth and problem-solving. In 2019, we saw that the gust around AI has slowed down, bringing more definitions and mannerisms through which organizations are approaching the growing technology. Organizations implemented a strategy to plan their investments in AI and focused on what areas need to be targeted.
Some organizations have been able to stand out when it comes to AI investments, adding a new dimension to technology,
1. Nuro
Both founders, Jiajun Zhu and Dave Ferguson, after working for more than 5 years each on Google’s self-driving project, shifted their focus on autonomous vehicles for delivery. Headquartered at Mountain View, Nuro is a driverless delivery vehicle that has just completed more than thousands of trips to shoppers, along with a partnership with Kroger in Texas. It has received funding worth approximately $1.03 billion and has a valuation of $2.7 billion. The founders said that shifting base from living beings to non-living goods has been a pleasant challenge because there are lesser constraints associated with it.
2. Aurora Innovation
Autonomous transportation has become a crowded space with automakers and innovators flaunting their new tech every week. So Aurora Innovation decided to stand out. And instead of competing with the fleets, it will power the fleets. Chris Urmson, CEO and Founder, started the company with Sterling Anderson and Drew Bagnell. The trio has been working with different technology giants in autonomous vehicles, including Tesla, Uber, and Google. Currently, Aurora Innovation has a deal with Hyundai to provide software for its future Kia models. The company recently received funding from Amazon, Sequoia Capital, and T. Rowe Price, making it one of the best well-funded players in the space.
3. Tempus
Uses AI to gather and analyze massive pools of data from medical and clinical sources. The company, along with its AI tool, provides different types of precision medicines to all patients. Therefore, each patient receives a personalized and optimized treatment on the basis of his specific needs, which are concluded, ranging from genetic makeup, past medical history to diagnose history. The focus of the company is mainly toward cancer patients. Eric Lefkofsky, the founder of the company, is focusing on building a database for genome sequencing. The 700 strong company has raised more than $520 million and has a valuation of about $3.1 billion.
4. CognitiveScale
CognitiveScale builds augmented intelligence for various businesses that include digital commerce, financial industry, insurance, and healthcare. The company supports organizations in increasing their customer acquisition and engagement, providing better billing and claims. One of the first products that helped in automating the management of AI business risk is Cortex Certifai that helps companies in building explainable and trustworthy AI systems. For building better AI systems, Cognitive Process Accelerators are helping the businesses. Cognitive Process Accelerators are containerized, open-specification based services, which are developed to reduce the time and skills required to design, build, deploy, and manage enterprise-grade machine intelligence systems. CognitiveScale has raised close to $40 million in funding in the past.
5. Neurala
Neurala is developing The Neurala Brain, a deep learning platform used for visual monitoring. The deep learning neural network software can use any image from a camera, phone, or drone for analysis and conclusion. Neurala solutions are currently used on more than a million devices and used by various government organizations such as NASA, Motorola, Huawei, and Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Neurala was founded by Heather Ames Versace and recently received a funding of $14 million.
6. AIBrain
AIBrain offers augmented intelligence in the technology used for augmenting human intelligence with AI, along with the 4 dimensions of intelligence that uses cognitive, physical, social, and emotional. The Adaptive Interactive Cognitive Reasoning Engine (AICoRE) with a Memory Graph is the next step toward Augmented Intelligence, based on both neural and cognitive sciences. The technology offers augmentation of technology. For both the AICoRE and a human-like memory called Memory Graph, AICore is the cognitive reasoning engine used for unifying the problem solving and learning.
7. Vidado
The company has designed an AI platform that can pull data from virtually any channel, including handwritten documents, and which can also bring paper up to digital workflow speed and accuracy. The cloud-based platform is being utilized by many leading organizations for life insurance policy digitalization, and the technology offers an accuracy rate of 97.3%. It gives access to an easy death certification insight for insurance companies and eases their digital conversions of mailrooms.
8. Icertis
With a valuation of over $1 billion, the company recently celebrated its 10-year anniversary this year, managing more than 6 million contracts. The company-based platform is assisting the organizations in analyzing their past negotiations and even automating administrative tasks. The company has clients in more than 90 countries.
9. OpenAI
The non-profit research group is working for the development of AI to benefit humankind and increase the adaptability of AI across different industries. OpenAI has been able to gain large sums of money through investments and even through acquisitions. OpenAI includes some of the biggest names in AI with support from Amazon, Elon Musk, and Microsoft. Some of the key people in its development are Ilya Sutskever and Greg Brockman.
10. Fundbox
Fundbox takes a data-driven approach toward lending loans to small businesses rather than regular people. Founder Eyal Shinar said during an interview that their view toward the development of the product was providing businesses with loans, as he saw his mom struggle with cash flow when dealing with outstanding customer invoices. A business that wants to take a loan from the Fundbox connects with its existing finance tools platform, which then uses the data to assess the risks, and then decides whether to approve the loan or not.
Conclusion
In 2019, organizations made groundbreaking plans for AI before strategizing on what problems it would solve, and how they would benefit from those plans. About 60% of businesses are currently stuck at the planning stage of AI, the challenge being opportunities, talent gap, and implementation of a strategy for AI. To know more about AI technology, you can download our latest whitepapers on Artificial Intelligence.
