To coincide with the National Retailer Association’s annual conference in NYC, Google Cloud today unveiled new gen AI products designed to help retailers personalize their online shopping experiences and streamline their back-office operations.
But the slew of announcements show, if nothing else, how aggressively Google is attempting to court gen AI customers.
(Google’s long offered Distributed Cloud Edge as a service, but it’s now targeting retailers more directly.)
My question after being pre-briefed on all this was, frankly, are retailers really clamoring for gen AI?
But considering some of the rocky rollouts of gen AI in retail recently (see: Amazon’s review summaries exaggerating negative feedback), I can’t say I’m convinced that the retail industry will rush to adopt gen AI en masse — from Google Cloud or any other provider.
We previewed Skyted’s voice-capturing mask last week, but when I came across the startup at CES 2024, I had to check it out for myself in person.
You can read all about the tech in our previous article, but what is it actually like in person?
“We launched a mobile application that will give you information about how big your ‘sound bubble’ is.
The team has some ideas:“We’re looking at various customer segments; mostly businesses, open spaces, like offices where this would be a huge.
We also looking at B2C, for use cases such as gaming,” explains Daridon.
AppDirect, a San Francisco- and Montreal-based platform for buying, selling and managing tech through a network of IT advisors, has raised $100 million from CDPQ to expand its financing program for small- and medium-sized tech businesses.
“Our Invest program is purpose-built to empower our technology advisors,” Emanuel Bertolin, AppDirect’s chief revenue officer, said in a statement.
“To keep up with today’s ever-changing market, technology merchants need fast access to capital to accelerate their growth.”AppDirect’s Capital Invest program is a loan program, providing capital for tech businesses in the form of upfront payments.
Today, AppDirect offers a set of tools that let businesses monetize — or buy — tech products across a range of different channels and devices.
We also provide the opportunity for our advisor community to procure technology for their customers directly from the AppDirect catalog.”AppDirect launched the Capital Invest program in 2021.
The company Samsung has embraced recycled materials in some of its most popular products.
Innovative features like SmartThings AI Energy Mode can help consumers manage energy at home by using connected intelligence.
Samsung has also announced the integration of SmartThings energy with Tesla’s Powerwall solar inverter and Wall Connector EV charging solutions.
The company prioritizes reuse and recycling, offering refurbished phones through programs like 35 Renewed, and the Galaxy Upcycling initiative which helps users reuse or repurpose old phones.
From the design of their products to their end-of-life, Samsung is proving that tech companies can embrace sustainability and environmental responsibility.
Wandering around the CES preview events, it’s clear that AI and other smart tech is coming to toasters, grills and all sorts of other devices.
“We can cook a one-inch ribeye steak in about 1 minute and 45 seconds” says Jordan Aspley, the company’s founder.
Wave, baby, waveAnother device shown off at CES 2024 is the “Macrowave” from Revolution Cooking.
The instructions are, you know, defrost in your microwave, preheat your oven, take it out of the microwave, put it in your oven.
One example is Spark One — the $1,100 smart grill we featured in our 2020 gift guide — which went out of business by 2022.
Nigerian fintech Cleva, focused on creating a banking platform for African individuals and businesses to receive international payments by opening USD accounts, has raised $1.5 million in pre-seed funding.
“The team is uniquely qualified to address this given their experience building banking products at Stripe and robust platforms at AWS.
Both founders share a strong connection with the African market.
(It’s worth highlighting that while Cleva exclusively provides USD accounts, other players offer GBP and EUR accounts.)
Meanwhile, the YC-backed startup, which generates revenue when users swap and exchange their funds (in USD accounts) for the local currency (in naira for now), also charges a 0.9% fee on deposits into customers’ USD accounts.
It’s an opportunity to take advantage of the brief Sunday morning news lull before the deluge kicks into full effect Monday.
Tomorrow is, after all, when Samsung will host its CES 2024 press conference along with other big names like Sony and LG.
“In&Out Flip is a technology that can provide a new alternative for consumers who prefer bar-shaped smartphones due to the thickness of foldable products,” the company said in a release.
As for testing the tech, Samsung apparently utilized the device in temperatures ranging from -4-degrees up to 140-degrees Fahrenheit.
The technology appears on the Rollable Flex, as well as the Flex Hybrid, the latter of which combines it with a sliding display.
TikTok is looking to grow the size of its TikTok Shop U.S. business tenfold to as much as $17.5 billion this year, according to a new report from Bloomberg.
As Bloomberg previously reported, TikTok was on track to amass around $20 billion in global gross merchandise value last year.
In addition, the report says the company is planning to launch TikTok Shop in Latin America in the coming months.
The report indicates that during the Black Friday and Cyber Monday season in November, more than 5 million new U.S. customers purchased something via TikTok Shop.
TikTok Shop has also started to reduce some subsidies for merchants.
“Like it was legit following the scent.”One person claimed that a wolf spider bit them after they used their wife’s lotion.
No because @Sephora here's my wolf spider bite after using some of my wife's lotion and then changing her freaking tire.
What many people might mistake as “wolf spiders” are likely house spiders in the Agelenidae family, which behave and chemically interact differently.
In other words, the compounds that would attract one species of spider wouldn’t attract another, like wolf spiders or house spiders.
Some wolf spiders, for example, user kairomones to avoid larger spiders that might hunt them, or hunt in areas where there’s more prey for them.
The transition to multi-product can be a significant revenue generator when done successfully.
During my first few years, the company saw rapid growth as customers continued to use our software in new and inventive ways.
Drawing on my experience of graduating monday.com from the one-product mold, here are three steps to ensure your multi-product journey is successful.
If the (product-market) shoe fitsWe all know that finding a product-market fit can be challenging, especially when you have limited resources and must move quickly to find and serve your target market.
But there are a few signals that your initial offering has a wide product-market fit, and it would be easy for you to identify your second product:
