Unprecedented Boom in Data Analytics & AI M&A

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THE WEEKLY NEWSLETTER OF AIM. Sunday, Nov 5, 2023 | Was this email forwarded to you? Sign up here By Amit Naik The past few years have seen a significant rise in data analytics and AI acquisitions, with Accenture, IBM, Databricks, and Snowflake among the active players. As per AIM, this year alone witnessed 25+ acquisitions in data science, analytics, and AI services, much more compared to last year, which saw about 15 major acquisitions. Here’s a glimpse of the top acquisitions that took place over the last few years. Accenture on AI & Analytics Acquisition Spree  Accenture has invested approximately $2.5 billion across 25 acquisitions. Some of the recent and most prominent ones include Flutura, which it acquired to strengthen its industrial AI services for clients in the energy, chemicals, metals, mining and pharmaceutical industries, and Nextira, to unleash cloud-native initiatives and OnProcess Technology in order to enhance inventory management and solve complex services challenges using AI.  “M&A is a core competency of Accenture,” chief Julie Sweet beamed. She said that they have been doing the integration of businesses for many, many years, and are looking to make even bigger ones in the coming years.  She added that the company is continuing to see significant demand in areas like cloud migration and modernisation, modern ERP and data and AI, particularly generative AI. “We estimate that only 40% of workloads are in the cloud today; only one-third of clients have modernised their ERP platforms, and less than 10% have what we define as mature data and AI capabilities,” she said, adding that helping build a strong digital core and then using it to reinvent will be a crucial growth driver.  Accenture has also invested about $1.1 billion in the training and development of its employees. “With investments in our AI Academy focused on deep AI and genAI specialisation, we are also progressing towards our goals of doubling our deeply skilled data and AI practitioners from 40,000 to 80,000,” she added.  IBM joins the AI acquisition spree  IBM has pumped close to $5 billion in acquisitions and is likely to invest more in the coming months. Some of the recent acquisitions include Apptio and StepZen, which are taking the business to a whole new level, alongside scaling its watsonx AI and data platform. “We got acquisitions that are now accretive and scaling nicely,” avered Jim Kavanaugh, chief financial officer at IBM.  “To bring our AI capabilities to life, we have more than 20,000 data and AI consultants, including a CoE for generative AI,” shared IBM chief Arvind Krishna. He said that their team helps clients navigate the AI landscape – from crafting a strategy to understanding how AI can be used and deployed responsibly, and providing valuable real-time feedback to other product teams.  Mega deals ahead  In 2023, Databricks acquired Arcion, Mosaic ML and Okera to bolster its AI and analytics capabilities, particularly generative AI. At the same time, Snowflake also acquired Neeva and Myst for the same reason.  While Databricks and Snowflake are upping the game in generative AI, NVIDIA and AMD are busy enhancing computational and software capabilities with the acquisitions of OmniML and Nod.ai, respectively. It is also interesting to note that Databricks is leveraging AMD, while Snowflake has a close collaboration with NVIDIA.  Lastly, the acquisitions of Splunk and Sumo Logic are noteworthy, signalling a trend of mega-deals and consolidation in the near future as the demand for data analytics and AI surges, particularly in the area of generative AI and workflow automation. AI Forum for India. 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Many developers believe that you can now run the biggest open source LLM (Falcon with 180 billion parameters) with a low-quality loss on a 14-inch laptop.  Enjoy the complete story here.  Apple is Finally Making Strides in Healthcare Apple recently announced its plans to add more health-detection features, particularly for hypertension and sleep apnea, in its next series of watches.  Interestingly, Apple isn't the only tech giant attempting to penetrate the healthcare sector; Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and Oracle also acknowledge its flaws and are actively striving to innovate and improve it.  Here’s a quick glimpse into what big tech is up to in the healthcare industry.  Read the full article here.  How AI is Navigating SAP’s Intelligent Enterprise SAP’s Intelligent Enterprise segment has significantly evolved since 2018, with the focus shifting towards the seamless integration of various business processes, aiming to create a unified and efficient system.  In a recent interview with AIM, Michael Ameling, SVP and member of the executive board, head of Intelligent Enterprise & BTP, MD SAP Labs, Dresden, Germany, shares the vision for the platform, alongside discussing the future and more.  Read the complete story here. AIM UPCOMING EVENTS >> Join AIM at AI Forum for India's exclusive workshop! "Responsible Generative AI: Unveiling Risks, Challenges & Best Practices" 📅 Date: Nov 16, 2023 🕔 Time: 5:00 PM IST Dive deep with Monica Kothari into the ethical landscape of GenAI. Discover how to balance innovation with responsibility. 🔗 Register here. 📣 Q&A: Our Discord Channel: "Webinar Discussions" Join Us at India's Biggest AI Conference for Developers - MLDS 2024! 🗓️ February 1 to 2, 2024  📍 NIMHANS Convention Center, Bangalore The 6th Edition of the Machine Learning Developers Summit (MLDS) is coming to Bangalore, offering the definitive gathering for India's vibrant ML community. 🎟️ Secure Your Spot! Buy Tickets Now! Call for Papers: Are you at the forefront of AI research? MLDS '24 is your stage to share significant advancements.  Abstract Submission Deadline: Dec 3, 2023 https://mlds.analyticsindiamag.com/paper-presentation/ 40 UNDER 40 Data Scientists Awards We're also on the hunt for India's top young data scientists! If you're transforming data into meaningful insights, we want to celebrate your achievements at MLDS 2024. 2024 Nominations Are Now Open! Nominate Here: https://mlds.analyticsindiamag.com/40-under-40-data-scientists-awards/ AIM SHOTS >> Elon Musk’s xAI finally launches ChatGPT-alternative Grok. The chatbot is currently available for the US users for initial feedback, before a wider release. Join the waitlist here.  Redis announces that its Redis Cloud service has secured PCI DSS Level 1 certification, claiming to improve its suite of security and privacy assurances.  Intel joins the Make in India brigade unveiling a strategic partnership with eight prominent EMS companies and ODMs to bolster laptop manufacturing in India. AMD introduces the Ryzen 5 7545U processor as a part of the Ryzen 7040U family, which is its bestselling GPU, featuring the Zen 4c architecture, a variant derived from the Zen 4 design. Infosys expands its presence in Europe, boosting its global digital capabilities, and sets up a proximity centre in Sofia, Bulgaria. Apple finally breaks its silence on generative AI and acknowledges its investments in confidential generative AI projects.  Karnataka steps up to train 1,000 engineers for the Micron plant in Gujarat.  AWS announces the general availability of Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) Capacity Blocks for ML, offering an innovative consumption model for customers, powered by NVIDIA H100 GPUs. Download our mobile app Access our stories, video content and events on the go. Stay Connected info@analyticsindiamag.com © 2023 Analytics India Magazine Pvt Ltd and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. For more information, email info@analyticsindiamag.com

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