Does anyone really doubt that ads will eventually appear in AI responses? Start-up Koah, which just announced $5 million in seed funding, is already placing contextual ads within AI apps including AI assistant Luzia, parenting app Heal, student research tool Liner, and creative platform DeepAI. The idea is to help smaller app developers generate revenue so they can keep costs down for end-users.
Team management vendor Atlassian is buying The Browser Company, developers of the Dia and Arc browsers. The company plans to embed AI within Dia so it can provide context and connect applications in browser tabs, helping developers and project teams work more efficiently. Price was $610 million in cash.
Two CompTIA analyses offer contrary takes on how AI will impact tech employment: one finds lower employment right now while the other projects strong growth over the next ten years. Somewhat similarly, Salesforce’s Marc Benioff says that AI agents allowed his company to cut 4,000 support jobs while ServiceNow president Amit Zavery says AI hasn’t reduced his headcount but did let workers do a better job, resulting in higher customer satisfaction. Benioff also said that Salesforce will be entering the IT services business, perhaps because he feels AI will make... Read More >
Live shopping platform Whatnot has raised a $225 million Series F, more than doubling its valuation to $11.5 billion since its last funding round in January. The company reports that more than $6 billion worth of items have been sold on the platform so far this year. It’s more evidence that live shopping is growing.