The handoff tax: What it costs when your rep is alone on the call
The handoff tax: What it costs when your rep is alone on the call

The most expensive moment in a B2B sales cycle does not look like one. An account executive is thirty minutes into a live call. Discovery is finished, the buyer is engaged, and the conversation has moved past polite curiosity into the part where deals …

How artificial intelligence is used to streamline corporate travel logistics
How artificial intelligence is used to streamline corporate travel logistics

The evolution of enterprise software has solved countless operational bottlenecks over the past decade. Supply chains are mapped in real time, and global payrolls execute automatically across dozens of tax jurisdictions with total precision. Yet someho…

AI’s finally expensive enough to make Wall Street nervous
AI’s finally expensive enough to make Wall Street nervous

It’s earnings season, and investors got an unpleasant surprise from Google: an increase on its spending estimate, to as much as $205 billion – from the last quarter’s projection of up to $190 billion. Even the lower end of Google’s new projected range – $195 billion – is much more than the company had previously […]

‘Super Mario Galaxy Movie’ Streaming Shifts To Peacock This Week Following $1 Billion Box Office Run

“The Super Mario Galaxy Movie,” the animated sequel to 2023’s “The Super Mario Bros. Movie,” is coming to streaming video on demand this week following the film’s massive run at the worldwide box office.

Starbucks’ AI tool didn’t die in a pilot. It died in 11,300 stores.
Starbucks’ AI tool didn’t die in a pilot. It died in 11,300 stores.

Starbucks told NomadGo on 3 April that it was scrapping the AI inventory tool the Redmond startup had built for it. Within days the 30-person company cut a large part of its workforce, according to GeekWire. The cuts included the technical team that ra…

Anthropic spent a year buying biology talent. Its newest partner says the bottleneck isn’t science.
Anthropic spent a year buying biology talent. Its newest partner says the bottleneck isn’t science.

ICON plc has agreed a multi-year collaboration with Anthropic to put Claude across the clinical trial process. The Dublin company is a contract research organisation, which means pharmaceutical firms pay it to run their trials. It employed roughly 40,2…

The Italian state just backed €500m for the company that owns AOL
The Italian state just backed €500m for the company that owns AOL

Bending Spoons has agreed a €500m loan facility guaranteed by the Italian state. The guarantee comes from SACE, Italy’s export credit agency, which is wholly owned by the Ministry of Economy and Finance. HSBC Continental Europe, Intesa Sanpaolo and BPE…

Two hotel groups moved into ChatGPT this week. Neither will let you pay there
Two hotel groups moved into ChatGPT this week. Neither will let you pay there

Two hotel groups moved into ChatGPT this week, a day apart and at opposite ends of the market. Radisson Hotel Group launched an app on Tuesday, built with Accenture, covering more than 1,000 hotels in over 100 countries. G6 Hospitality launched a plugi…

A quarter of the S&P now claims measurable AI benefits. Last year it was 14%
A quarter of the S&P now claims measurable AI benefits. Last year it was 14%

Wall Street has spent three years paying for the companies that build AI. It is starting to pay for the companies that use it. The rotation has a number behind it. Morgan Stanley ran a systematic analysis of earnings call transcripts. It found that 25%…

Friendsurance invented peer-to-peer insurance. It just sold for its paperwork.
Friendsurance invented peer-to-peer insurance. It just sold for its paperwork.

Cover Genius has acquired Friendsurance, the Berlin company that invented peer-to-peer insurance. The deal took effect immediately, and neither side disclosed a price. Friendsurance built its name on a simple idea. Small groups of policyholders pool to…