Ron Miller

Hex lands another $28M as data collaboration platform continues to gain traction

Image Credits: ArtemisDiana / Getty Images Many companies are struggling to get funding these days in an increasingly tight investment environment. It seems the days are gone when VC firms approach promising startups about funding instead of the…

UK competition authority is concerned about the $61B Broadcom-VMware deal

Image Credits: Justin Sullivan / Getty Images The U.K. Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) expressed concern today that the $61 billion Broadcom-VMware deal announced last year could result in more expensive servers for U.K. businesses. “We are…

CodiumAI is using generative AI to help developers build code logic tests automatically

Over his two decades of experience in the tech industry, CodiumAI co-founder and CEO Itamar Friedman has personally experienced the pain of building test suites to check his code logic. He found that while there are tools to check for code security…

Clerk is simplifying identity for front-end web developers

Image Credits: JuSun / Getty Images Developers building front-end Jamstack web applications often struggle to build identity with traditional API tools. With the approach growing in popularity, the founders of Clerk decided to focus their startup on…

Adobe promises artists will be compensated fairly with new generative AI product, but is fuzzy on details

One of the big problems with generative AI is understanding what source material was used to train the large language models underlying the solution. This comes down to two main problems for users: Do they have permission to use that underlying work,…

Two is bringing a consumer-like experience to B2B payments

Image Credits: Drypsiak / Getty Images When individuals make purchases online, they place items in the digital shopping cart and use a credit or debit card to complete the transaction instantly. Businesses operate differently, typically looking to…

AWS takes a hit in latest round of Amazon layoffs

Image Credits: Ron Miller When Amazon announced it was laying off another 9,000 employees today, AWS employees were not exempt with Amazon CEO (and former AWS CEO) Andy Jassy announcing the cloud division would be included into today’s round.…

Is generative AI really ready for the enterprise?

Image Credits: IR_Stone / Getty Images OpenAI released ChatGPT just a few short months ago, and it’s fair to say that it took the world by storm: It has over 100 million active users already. No wonder, when it can generate human-like, grammatically…

The long goodbye at Salesforce continues with more layoffs reported today

Image Credits: nadia_bormotova / Getty Images It would be easy to think that when Salesforce announced that it was laying off 10% of the workforce in January that it would let those folks know, and it would be over with — but some employees didn’t…

ThoughtSpot adds GPT-3 integration to help customers query data

Image Credits: Ca-ssis / Getty Images So far this week we’ve seen generative AI come to CRM from Salesforce and to customer service chatbots from Forethought — and that’s just the ones I’ve covered. Today, we look at ThoughtSpot’s generative AI…

Forethought aims to build more accurate chatbots with constrained generative AI models

Forethought has been building chatbots since 2017 with increasing levels of sophistication, intelligence and automation. Today, the startup announced the next phase in their development. It’s bringing generative AI to the platform with a beta release…

Is $12.4B a fair price for Qualtrics?

When the news hit Monday that Qualtrics was being acquired, it wasn’t exactly surprising. SAP never seemed enamored with the company in spite of spending a hefty $8 billion to buy it in 2018. It took the German software giant just two years before it…

Salesforce plans to incorporate generative AI across the platform

Image Credits: Mingwei Lim/Unsplash Salesforce has been in the news for a lot of non-product reasons of late, so it would be understandable that the company wants to bring the focus back to the business of selling software and away from the…

Qualtrics has $12B offer on the table to go private

Qualtrics was once a hot startup before SAP bought the company in 2018 for $8 billion. It was a fine exit, making the founders rich, but it never was really a good fit. SAP spun out the company just two years later, before taking it public in 2021.…

Will one good quarter appease the activist investors dogging Salesforce?

Image Credits: Bryce Durbin/TechCrunch Salesforce is dealing with five powerful activist investors. One way to get these firms off your back is performing well, which drives up stock prices. Salesforce checked that box with a stellar quarterly report…

Enterprise SaaS companies continue to navigate a complex economic environment

And it’s having an impact on returns Image Credits: DNY59 / Getty Images It’s been a tough time for enterprise SaaS companies. These organizations raked in profits and growth during the pandemic when offices shuttered and employees moved en masse to…

Adobe’s Scott Belsky talks generative AI — and why it’s not going to end up like web3

Scott Belsky, chief product officer and executive vice president for Adobe’s Creative Cloud, believes there’s a big difference between the hype cycle around web3 last year and what we’re seeing this year with ChatGPT and other generative AI models.…

Salesforce strikes back

CRM giant beats growth forecasts, guides strongly and announces more shareholder return Image Credits: Marlena Sloss/Bloomberg / Getty Images It would be an understatement to say that Salesforce has been having a rough ride of late — from activist…

Elliott has nominated its own slate of candidates for Salesforce board

Elliott Management, one of five activist investors working inside of Salesforce, has nominated a slate of candidates to the Salesforce board of directors. This move, which was confirmed by sources to TechCrunch, is an indication that negotiations to…

Savant Labs aims to bring analytics directly to line of business users

Image Credits: Yuichiro Chino / Getty Images Too often over the last decade, line of business people have been forgotten when it comes to analytics. Even though these folks are the closest to what’s happening with customers, they tend to get left…