Results

Salesforce has invested $166 billion in AI-native HR software provider HiBob in a fund raise that included Farallon Capital Management. HiBob's platform focuses on "Organizational Intelligence for the AI era." In a blog post, HiBob CEO Ronni Zehavi said:

"Every organization is unique. Its people, capabilities, relationships, culture, structure, decisions, and ways of working are what make it different.

As AI becomes more capable and more deeply embedded in work, that uniqueness becomes an asset.

For years, workforce data helped companies manage their people. Its next role is bigger: helping companies understand what they are capable of, where their workforce can create the most value, and how people and AI can work together most effectively."

You've always wanted an AI toothbrush and live stream your flossing. Now Dyson is aiming to deliver with its CameraJet toothbrush, which uses Gap Optical Targeting, Dyson's AI models for oral care, to analyze 28 live images per second for your precision flossing. The system is trained on 470,000 dental images.

Perhaps this Dyson toothbrush is just more evidence of AI saturation.

Dyson CameraJet

The Federal Trade Commission and 22 states are suing Amazon alleging that its sponsored ads are inflating prices. The complain alleges that "for over seven years, Amazon has covertly and substantially increased the prices that more than one million brands and sellers were required to pay to advertise on its platform."

For its part, Amazon has called the lawsuit misguided and strongly disagrees.

The biggest takeaway here is that this lawsuit could be a stumbling block for Amazon's ad business, which is growing at a rapid clip and has great profit margins. Without delving into the lawsuit merits, what seems obvious is that there a bunch of pols that need to look like they’re doing something constructive vs inflation. Amazon makes a nice headline.

MapQuest is proclaiming a return as the No. 1 navigation and mapping app in the US Apple App Store. The company is the No. 8 overall free app in the US and No. 2 overall in the Canada Apple App Store. Why? MapQuest is sticking to Lake Ontario as a name. The surge comes as Google lists Lake Ontario as Lake America per President Trump's executive order in the US.

Will MapQuest's surge last? Possibly. Aside from the lake naming hubbub retro brands are in.

CrowdStrike revenue growth accelerated in the second quarter as concerns about securing AI drove demand.

The company reported second quarter net income of $5.3 million, or a penny a share, on revenue of $1.47 billion, up 26% from a year ago. Non-GAAP earnings were 31 cents a share.

CEO George Kurtz said the quarter was its best performance in CrowdStrike's history. "The Mythos moment translated into mass-market acceptance that AI adoption needs security, and that's CrowdStrike. Every enterprise will run on AI, and securing it is the largest market opportunity in our history," he said.

CrowdStrike projected third quarter revenue of $1.523 billion to $1.529 billion with non-GAAP earnings of 31 cents a share. For fiscal 2027, CrowdStrike projected revenue of $5.99 billion to $6.01 billion with non-GAAP earnings of $1.25 a share to $1.26 a share.

Bill Gates penned an AI treatise that warned that there's no plan for AI disruption. Here are some choice excerpts from Gates' note:

  • "I don’t see evidence that leaders, experts, and communities are confronting the challenges adequately. There is no plan to ease the entry into the AI era. Part of the reason for this is that many commentators underestimate the extent of the impact AI will have."
  • "For as long as I can remember, I’ve wished innovation could happen faster. With AI, my feelings are more complicated."
  • "I’m especially worried about young people, who will enter a workforce with fewer entry-level openings. They understand the challenge because they are the most active users of AI and see both the capabilities and the rate of improvement. It’s no wonder that so many of them feel negatively about AI."
  • "Maximizing the benefits is just as important as minimizing the harms. If people see how AI makes their lives easier, it will help build the public trust that is necessary for managing the harder parts of the transition. If the first thing AI does in most people’s lives is take away their job, those who are already skeptical about it will outright reject it. This will make it harder to ever deliver on the benefits and it is another reason why governments, industries including the medical industry, and AI companies should be working together now."