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Special Purpose Acquisition Company (SPAC)An entity formed for the sole purpose of raising investment capital through an IPO
Written by
CFI Team
Published June 29, 2023
Updated July 7, 2023
Reviewed by
Andrew Loo
What is a Special Purpose Acquisition Company (SPAC)?A special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) is a corporation formed for the sole purpose of raising investment capital through an initial public offering (IPO). Such a business structure allows investors to contribute money towards a fund, which is then used to acquire one or more unspecified businesses to be identified after the IPO. Therefore, this sort of shell firm structure is often called a “blank-check company” in popular media.
When the SPAC raises the required funds through an IPO, the money is held in a trust until a predetermined period elapses or the desired acquisition is made. Therefore, a SPAC doesn’t conduct any business, does not sell anything and typically only holds the money raised in its own IPO.
In the event that the planned acquisition is not made or legal formalities are still pending, the SPAC is required to return the funds to the investors.
Key Highlights
SPAC stands for Special Purpose Acquisitions Company and is essentially a shell company with the sole purpose of raising money through an IPO to eventually acquire another company.
Founders or Sponsors have a period of time to find a suitable acquisition or the money would otherwise be returned to investors.
How Does a Special Purpose Acquisition Company Work? Founders and SponsorsA special purpose acquisition company is formed by experienced business executives who are confident that their reputation and experience will help them identify a profitable company to acquire. Since the SPAC is only a shell company, the founders’ reputation may become the selling point when sourcing funds from investors. The founders often hold an interest in a specific industry when starting a special purpose acquisition company.
A SPAC may also be founded by a team of well-connected private investors like billionaire Bill Ackman, institutional investors, private equity or hedge funds, or even high-profile CEOs like Richard Branson and even Donald Trump. These financiers are called Sponsors.
The founders and sponsors provide the starting capital for the company and they stand to benefit from a sizeable stake in the acquired company.
Issuing the IPOWhen issuing the IPO, the management team of the SPAC contracts an investment bank to handle the IPO. The investment bank and the management team of the company agree on a fee to be charged for the service, usually about 10% of the IPO proceeds. The securities sold during an IPO are offered at a unit price, which represents one or more shares of common stock.
The prospectus of the SPAC mainly focuses on the sponsors, and less on company history and revenues since the SPAC lacks performance history or revenue reports. All proceeds from the IPO are held in a trust account until a private company is identified as an acquisition target.
Acquiring a Target CompanyAfter the SPAC has raised the required capital through an IPO, the management team has 18 to 24 months to identify a target and complete the acquisition. The period may vary depending on the company and industry. The fair market value of the target company must be 80% or more of the SPAC’s trust assets.
Compared to an IPO, the SPAC is much less risky for the target company. In a SPAC acquisition, the target company only needs to sign a deal with the SPAC for a fixed amount of money at a negotiated price. Whereas if the company decides to go the IPO route, the target company is uncertain about the size, price or even potential demand.
If the SPAC is successful in acquiring a target company, the founders will profit from their stake in the new company, usually 20% of the common stock, while the investors receive an equity position according to their capital contribution.
In the event that the predetermined period lapses before an acquisition is completed, the SPAC is dissolved, and the IPO proceeds held in the trust account are returned to the investors. When running the SPAC, the management team is not allowed to collect salaries until the deal is completed. The founders, in that case, would be out-of-pocket any expenses incurred to set up the SPAC in the first place
SPAC Capital Structure Public UnitsA SPAC floats an IPO to raise the required capital to complete an acquisition of a private company. The capital is sourced from retail and institutional investors, and 100% of the money raised in the IPO is held in a trust account. In return for the capital, investors get to own units, with each unit comprising a share of common stock and a warrant to purchase more stock at a later date.
The purchase price per unit of the securities is usually $10.00. After the IPO, the units become separable into shares of common stock and warrants, which can be traded in the public market. The purpose of the warrant is to provide investors with additional compensation for investing in the SPAC.
Founder/Sponsor SharesThe founders/sponsors of the SPAC will purchase founder shares at the onset of the SPAC registration, and pay nominal consideration for the number of shares that results in a 20% ownership stake in the outstanding shares after the completion of the IPO. The shares are intended to compensate the management team, who are not allowed to receive any salary or commission from the company until an acquisition transaction is completed.
WarrantsThe units sold to the public comprise a fraction of a warrant, which allows the investors to purchase a whole share of common stock. Depending on the bank issuing the IPO and the size of the SPAC, one warrant may be excisable for a fraction of a share (either half, one-third or two-thirds) or a full share of stock.
For example, if a price per unit in the IPO is $10, the warrant may be exercisable at $11.50 per share. The warrants become exercisable either 30 days after the De-SPAC transaction or twelve months after the SPAC IPO.
The public warrants are cash-settled, meaning that the investor must pay the full cost of the warrant in cash to receive a full share of stock. Founder warrants, on the other hand, may be net settled, meaning that they are not required to deliver cash to receive a full share of stock. Instead, they are issued shares of stock with a fair market value equal to the difference between the stock trading price and the warrant strike price.
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5 Simple Strategies For New Patient Acquisition
4. Maintain a strong social media presence to acquire new patients.
Social media is unique in that people can randomly stumble upon new and interesting accounts while browsing their platforms of choice. In such an open environment, you only have a few seconds to make a meaningful impression. Don’t be afraid to load your social media pages with crisp images, infographics, videos and visual quotes that attest to your services.
Better yet, social media often allows you to analyze how well your content is performing with potential patients. Many platforms include analytics tools that tell you how many people saw your content and how many people further engaged with it. You can uncover engagement trends that point to which types of content interest people most and upload similar posts to attract new customers.
5. Build a strong online reputation to attract new patients.Through online reputation management, you can build a pristine web presence that helps persuade potential patients to contact you. The best online reputation management services handle the content creation tactics and help you get more patient reviews while addressing negative ones. These services can also offer public relations (including crisis management) and remove negative content.
Some online reputation management services are tailored specifically to patient acquisition and the medical sector. One such company, PatientPop, recently merged with Kareo, one of the best electronic medical records (EMR) software providers. This merger means you’ll get built-in tools for patient acquisition when you use Kareo’s medical software, known for its ease of use. (Read our Kareo review to learn more about this software.)
Using these tools is an excellent way to acquire patients, care for them, and retain them – all under one roof.
Tip
To streamline your medical billing process, invest in staff training, explain fees and personal financial obligations to patients, and implement an electronic medical records system.
What is patient acquisition?Patient acquisition encompasses all strategies your practice implements to bring in new patients. It primarily involves marketing efforts that spotlight your medical practice’s distinguishing features and how they differ from your competitors. Its focus is on patients who have never before used your services, rather than your existing patient base.
Why is patient acquisition important?Many practices – perhaps including yours – earn their reimbursements via a standard fee-for-service model. Under this model, your practice’s revenue increases as you see more patients. This arrangement presents a significant challenge, assuming most of your patients are healthy: How often can you really get your patients to make appointments? Probably not that often, which isn’t great for your revenue. Acquiring new patients can help.
The more patients you bring into your practice, the more appointments you can make. When you have more appointments, you can earn more revenue. It’s easier to turn a profit when you can source appointments from a wider pool of patients than the same core group.
You could argue that the emergence of value-based healthcare models through the government’s MIPS (Merit-Based Incentive Payment System) program lessens the need for patient acquisition. But that argument is flawed. Yes, MIPS can increase your reimbursement per patient, but seeing more patients is still a direct throughline to greater revenue. MIPS can also decrease your reimbursement per patient. In that case, patient acquisition could help stabilize your finances.
What’s the difference between patient acquisition and patient retention?While patient acquisition concerns solely potential new customers, patient retention concerns only your current patients. All patient acquisition initiatives seek to bring you new patients, whereas patient retention efforts seek to prevent current patients from abandoning you for a competitor. (You also need to acquire patients before you can retain them.)
A patient acquisition strategy could involve aiming to place your practice’s website higher in search engine results pages for relevant local queries. That’s because people searching for, say, “podiatrist Brooklyn” are clearly looking for a new doctor. If you’re a podiatrist, you could be that person.
Chances are your current patients aren’t searching for “podiatrist Brooklyn” – well, unless they’re unhappy with you. Patient retention strategies help keep them happy. They require positive, attentive patient interactions with front-office staff and medical personnel. Your front-office staff can also schedule future appointments as patients leave or call them when a new appointment is necessary to maximize retention.
Enterprise Ai Company Landscape Breakdown 2023
Artificial intelligence is revolutionizing every industry with various use cases. Demand for AI products grows as more companies shift their legacy systems with digital products to survive in the competitive business landscape. However, AI vendor landscape is crowded, and most executives or decision-makers have limited knowledge of the AI landscape. Therefore, we compiled a comprehensive categorization of AI companies based on their sizes, technology, industry, business function, geography, business model & services they offer. Yet, this list does not contain all AI vendors. If you want to see our comprehensive and up-to-date AI vendor lists, feel free to check out chúng tôi where we list 8000+ AI vendors based on their technology offerings.
Breakdown by size Tech-giantsGlobal AI race is getting fierce, and companies such as Google, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, and Apple develop new AI products& services and make new AI acquisitions. Apple is leading in the number of AI acquisitions, and Microsoft has the most AI-related patents (more than 18,000) in its portfolio.
Recommended reading:
Startups Total funding ≥ $1 BillionAs of October 2023, 5 startups raised more than or equal to $1 Billion funding:
Orion Labs: Developing voice-activated communication and automation solutions for deskless workers.
Funding: $63M
Headquarter: United States
# of employees:51-200
Hive: A full-stack AI company specialized in computer vision and deep learning.
Funding: $20.2M
Headquarter: United States
# of employees: 51-200
Hypatos: A process automation startup that applies language processing AI and computer vision tech to speed up financial document processing
Funding: $10M
Headquarter: Germany
# of employees: 11-50
Breakdown by technology Machine LearningEnables companies to build and deploy ML models. These models could be in any AI domain such as NLP, machine vision, etc.
Machine learning vendors
H2O.io: An open-source machine learning platform that enables AI applications via services in cloud and on-premises.
Funding: $151.1M
Headquarter: United States
# of employees: 201-500
Prevision.io: Providing an automated machine learning platform to generate and deploy highly accurate predictive models on cloud or on premises.
Funding: €7.5M
Headquarter: France
# of employees: 11-50
Tazi.ai: TAZI’s AutoML platform enables businesses to easily create, update, deploy, and take actions with ML where models are understandable and learn continuously from data and humans.
Funding: €1M
Headquarter: United States
# of employees: 11-50
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Natural Language Processing (NLP)Natural language processing is the core technology behind chatbots. NLP is a subcategory of AI that helps break down, understand, process, and determine the required action based on queries. NLP is the engine that performs tasks such as dialog control and task prediction. Since interest in chatbots is increasing and the market is expected to be $1+ billion by 2025, companies that provide NLP technology is in demand.
Natural Language Processing Vendors
SoundHound: The company provides voice-enabled AI and conversational intelligence technologies through a music discovery app and voice assistant.
Funding: $215M
Headquarter: United States
# of employees: 201-500
Grammarly: A digital writing assistant helps people write without errors.
Funding: $200M
Headquarter: United States
# of employees: 201-500
MindMeld: Their conversational AI platform enables companies to build intelligent conversational interfaces for any application or device.
Funding: $15.4M
Headquarter: United States
# of employees: 11-50
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Machine Vision Machine Vision Vendors Autonomous Things Autonomous things vendors
Peloton: Connected and autonomous truck company that supports drivers’ health and safety while minimizing the heavy dependence of logistics companies on drivers
Funding: $78.4M
Headquarter: United States
# of employees: 51-200
DJI Innovations: Developing innovative drone and camera technology for commercial and recreational use.
Funding: $105M
Headquarter: China
# of employees: 10.001+
Sunflower Labs: Combining outdoor sensors with autonomous aerial drones for a complete view of home security
Funding: Info not available
Headquarter: Sweden
# of employees: 11-50
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AnalyticsAI helps analytics get automated, more accessible, and more accurate. Thanks to AI and ML algorithms, organizations’ analytics methods are better in prediction, pattern recognition, and classification.
Analytics Vendors
RapidMiner: A software platform for data science teams that unites data prep, machine learning, and predictive model deployment.
Funding: $36M
Headquarter: United States
# of employees: 51-200
Alteryx: Data science and self-service analytics platform can prep, blend, enrich, and analyze data, manage, and deploy predictive analytics solutions.
Funding: $163M
Headquarter: United States
# of employees: 1.001-5.000
Saama: AI-powered clinical analytics cloud platform company that delivers actionable business insights for life sciences.
Funding: $75.8M
Headquarter: United States
# of employees: 1.001-5.000
For more on AI-powered analytics:
Task MiningTask mining technologies enable businesses to collect and monitor user interaction data to understand how they perform the tasks. Most task mining solutions are integrated with process mining technologies. These enable organizations to understand processes and find ways to enhance the whole process rather than just improve how employees perform specific tasks.
Task Mining Vendors
FortressIQ: They claim that their platform can automatically discover, map, and document all the digital processes executed by an organization’s workforce thanks to AI.
Funding: $46M
Headquarter: United States
# of employees: 11-50
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AutomationAI-powered systems can automate various business processes with the help of RPA technology. Some automation examples are
accounts payable (AP) automation,
invoice automation,
document automation,
sales & marketing automation
AI-powered automation vendors
Automation Anywhere: An AI-powered digital workforce platform that democratizes automation and liberates people from mundane and repetitive tasks.
Funding: $840M
Headquarter: United States
# of employees: 1.001-5.000
Workfusion: Automating enterprise business processes by combining robotics, AI-powered cognitive automation, and workforce orchestration.
Funding: $121.3M
Headquarter: United States
# of employees: 201-500
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Breakdown by industry HealthcareThe AI healthcare market is expected to be $6.6 billion by 2023. The most prominent applications of AI companies in the healthcare industry are early diagnosis, drug discovery, and better treatment along with data-driven administration by analyzing and interpreting the available patient and company data more precisely.
Healthcare AI vendors
Atomwise: A startup using AI to accelerate drug discovery.
Funding: $176.6M
Headquarter: United States
# of employees: 51-200
Owkin: Deploying AI and federated learning for medical research.
Funding: $74.1M
Headquarter: United States
# of employees: 51-200
Zebra Medical Vision: Imaging Analytics Platform allows healthcare institutions to analyze clinical imaging data in real-time and detect medical indications.
Funding: $74.1M
Headquarter: United States
# of employees: 51-200
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InsuranceThe insurance industry heavily relies on documents and repetitive processes. AI and Insurtech companies deliver automation in back-office tasks while improving customer service (via chatbots) and enabling fraud detection (via predictive analytics).
Insurance AI vendors
Lemonade: A licensed insurance carrier that offers renters, homeowners, and pet health insurance in the United States and contents and liability insurance in Germany and the Netherlands.
Funding: $480M
Headquarter: United States
# of employees: 201-500
Tractable: The insurtech startup that develops artificial intelligence for accident and disaster recovery.
Funding: $59.9M
Headquarter: United States
# of employees: 201-500
Zesty.ai: An AI-powered property analytics and risk platform for insurance.
Funding: $13M
Headquarter: United Kingdom
# of employees: 51-200
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RetailAI products & services can provide retailers various capabilities such as
Customer Intelligence where businesses leverage customer data to deliver better and personalized products & services.
Autonomous stores to serve customers faster.
Autonomous warehouses to improve the efficiency of supply chain processes.
AI Retail Vendors
AiFi: Specialized in developing store automation systems with a combination of AI, edge computing, and scalable sensor fusion technology.
Funding: $29.5M
Headquarter: United States
# of employees: 51-200
Heuritech: Specialized in developing store automation systems with a combination of AI, edge computing, and scalable sensor fusion technology.
Funding: €5.2M
Headquarter: France
# of employees: 51-200
Osara: Osara is an artificial intelligence company that provides warehouse automation technology through machine learning solutions.
Funding: $29.3M
Headquarter: United States
# of employees: 51-200
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ManufacturingMost popular AI use cases in manufacturing focus on improving maintenance and quality. Manufacturing includes orchestration of processes and full of analytical data that suits AI/ ML algorithms; therefore, manufacturers can generate value through AI adoption.
AI Manufacturing Vendors
Data Prophet: Its AI solution suite improves quality and yield in manufacturing
Funding: $6M
Headquarter: South Africa
# of employees: 51-200
NavVis: The company helps manufacturers drive efficiencies in global factory planning and operations with a digital twin solution that enables fast and accurate 3D mapping and 3D visualization of the shop floors,
Funding: $68.2M
Headquarter: Germany
# of employees: 51-200
Noodle.AI: Noodle AI provides AI-powered analytics to minimize waste in manufacturing and supply chain operations.
Funding: $72M
Headquarter: United States
# of employees: 51-200
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LogisticsCapabilities AI technology offers to logistics companies are:
Supply & Demand Planning
Backoffice & Warehouse Automation
Autonomous transportation
Logistics optimization through analytics
AI Logistics Vendors
Scale AI: An investment company that funds AI initiatives for supply chain companies.
Funding: CA$23.4M
Headquarter: Canada
# of employees: 11-50
Aquify: Company focuses on scalable 3D computer vision solutions based on commodity hardware for accelerating and improving the accuracy of the manual processes gating logistics and manufacturing throughput.
Funding: $36.8M
Headquarter: United States
# of employees: 11-50
LogiNext: An SaaS company for field service and logistics optimization. LogiNext uses data analytics and machine learning algorithms to optimize movements across the globe.
Funding: $49.6M
Headquarter: United States
# of employees: 51-200
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TelecomIn the telecommunication industry, AI projects focus on the following technologies:
Network optimization
Virtual Assistants
Robotic process automation (RPA)
AI Telecom Vendors
Metawave: A wireless technology company that builds intelligent and high-performance automotive radars by leveraging metamaterials and AI.
Funding: $49.6M
Headquarter: United States
# of employees: 11-50
DeepSig: Using ML and AI to learn optimized models directly from data so that communication systems become faster, more cost efficient, more secure, and able to excel in complex environments.
Funding: $7.7M
Headquarter: United States
# of employees: 11-50
BankingAI helps banks and other financial institutions reduce costs and errors with improved banking processes while ensuring data security and compliance. McKinsey estimated that AI can generate more than $250 billion in value for financial institutions.
AI Banking Vendors
Avant: An online lending platform that offers alternatives to its clients by relying upon big data and machine-learning algorithms.
Funding: $1.6B
Headquarter: United States
# of employees: 501-1.000
OakNorth: A credit science platform that leverages machine learning to model a view of a borrower’s financial situation.
Funding: $1B
Headquarter: United Kingdom
# of employees: 501-1.000
ComplyAdvantage: Providing AI-driven financial crime risk data and detection technology for financial institutions.
Funding: $88.2M
Headquarter: United Kingdom
# of employees: 201-500
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Breakdown by business function/department they serve Sales AI Sales Vendors
SalesDirector.ai: Providing AI based sales coaching and forecasting for enterprise sales teams
Funding: Not available
Headquarter: United States
# of employees: 11-50
Zilliant: The company offers price optimization and management software for manufacturing, distribution, high-tech, and industrial service companies.
Funding: $92.4M
Headquarter: United States
# of employees: 51-200
People.ai: Using AI to transforms business activity data into recommendations that increase the impact of Sales, Marketing, and Operations.
Funding: $100M
Headquarter: United States
# of employees: 51-200
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MarketingThere are numerous AI products you can purchase to enhance different marketing strategies such as SEO, content marketing, and account based marketing (ABM). Products like recommendation engines or website personalization solutions help businesses improve conversations while AI-powered analytics is enabling better customer targeting.
AI Marketing Vendors
MarketMuse: Using AI to accelerate content planning, creation, and optimization. Some examples are identifying content quality issues on the site and building blueprints that show how to write to cover a topic comprehensively.
Funding: $6.7M
Headquarter: United States
# of employees: 11-50
Writer: An AI writing assistant
Funding: $5M
Headquarter: United States
# of employees: 11-50
Seamless.AI: A sales automation software that organizes contacts and makes them universally accessible and useful.
Funding: $300K
Headquarter: United States
# of employees: 51-200
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Customer ServiceAI can help customer service team enable communication with customers through chatbots while performing analytics on customer responses to enhance call experience.
AI Customer Service Vendors
Gong.io: A Revenue Intelligence Platform that captures and understands every customer interaction then delivers insights to empower revenue teams for data driven decisions.
Funding: $333M
Headquarter: United States
# of employees: 201-500
Observe.AI: A software company that leverages AI, machine learning, and analytics to develop contact center software. The company helps businesses analyze all calls and streamline quality assurance workflows.
Funding: $88.1M
Headquarter: United States
# of employees: 51-200
Directly: The company offers AI-powered solutions to help resolve customer issues with a mix of automation and human support.
Funding: $66.8M
Headquarter: United States
# of employees: 51-200
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Human Resources (HR)AI can facilitate recruiting and saves time for recruiters by automating processes such as candidate identification & outreach, resume screening & interview analysis.
AI vendors for HR department
XOR.ai: Developing technologies for human resource and talent acquisition workflow automation.
Funding: $8.4M
Headquarter: United States
# of employees: 51-200
Ideal: The company uses AI to centralize rich candidate data and screen candidates so that recruiting teams make more accurate, fair, and efficient talent decisions.
Funding: $3M
Headquarter: Canada
# of employees: 11-50
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SecurityArtificial intelligence’s influence on security systems depends on where you look.
AI helps enhance security systems.
AI creates new vulnerable points that businesses need to secure.
Cyberattackers may use AI for malicious actions.
Regardless of perspective, businesses should rely on AI to secure themselves from cyberattacks since average cost of a data breach is expected to surpass $150 million in 2023.
AI Security Vendors
Palo Alto Networks: Addressing the security challenges with continuous innovation that seizes the latest breakthroughs in artificial intelligence, analytics, automation, and orchestration.
Funding: $65M
Headquarter: United States
# of employees: 5.001-10.000
LogRhythm: Delivering security analytics; user and entity behavior analytics (UEBA); network detection and response (NDR); and security orchestration, automation, and response (SOAR) within a single, integrated platform for rapid detection, response, and neutralization of threats.
Funding: $126.3M
Headquarter: United States
# of employees: 501-1.000
Absolute Software: Creating endpoint resiliency solutions that enable organizations to secure their devices, data, and users.
Funding: Publicly traded company on Toronto Stock exchange
Headquarter: United States
# of employees: 201-500
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Breakdown by geographyAccording to a study from 2023, the top 5 countries by number of AI startups are
United States: 1394 startups
China: 383 startups
Israel: 362 startups
United Kingdom: 245 startups
Canada: 131 startups
And San Francisco is the leading in region that has the highest number of AI startups with 596 startups. Yet, the interesting fact is around one-third of startups have Chinese founders/co-founders.
Breakdown by business modelLike tech companies, AI companies can also be classified by the size of the businesses they target:
Consumers (B2C)
B2B
SMEs
Mid-market (Companies with hundreds of millions in revenue)
Enterprise (Forbes 2000 or at least $1 billion in revenue)
Though most AI startups, specifically in industries such as insurance, retail, healthcare, and banking, focus on enhancing customer experience through the guidance of data and analytics, they promote their products for businesses rather than consumers. In other words, most AI companies are B2B focused. According to Asgard’s research, which is a venture fund for AI companies, 64% of AI companies are B2B. However, their calculation methodology doesn’t look 100% accurate since there are numerous B2B companies such as OJO Labs (in real estate) and Personetics Technologies (in Fintech) where the research below included them in B2C environment. Therefore, we assume ratio of B2B AI startups is higher 64% of the AI ecosystem.
Source: Asgard
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Breakdown by service Product offerings HardwareAI chips are specially designed accelerators for artificial neural network(ANN) based applications. ANN is considered as a subfield of artificial intelligence and most commercial ANN applications are deep learning applications.
AI Chip Vendors
Graphcore: A semiconductor company that develops accelerators for AI and machine learning.
Funding: $460M
Headquarter: United States
# of employees: 51-200
Wave Computing: A company that is revolutionizing AI with its dataflow-based chips, systems and software that deliver orders of magnitude performance improvements over legacy architectures.
Funding: $203.3M
Headquarter: United States
# of employees: 51-200
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SoftwareMost AI products you encounter in the business world are SaaS products where vendors share APIs or deliver a the product via app or web portal.
Service offeringsSome vendors offer specific services based on your business’ needs. AI services businesses may purchase include
AI-as-a-Service (AIaaS)
Custom AI Development
Services for enabling AI transformation
Consulting
Services to support your internal data science teams
AI talent recruitment
Data labeling/ Annotation
Data science competitions
AI Platforms
If your business needs are niche, you need to build custom AI solutions. For this reason, you may want to check our custom AI development whitepaper where we explained every aspect of vendors that you may encounter within the AI landscape.
Recommended readings:
You can also check out our list of AI tools and services:
If you still have questions on AI vendors, don’t hesitate to contact us:
Sources:
*Data related to businesses’ funding is taken from Crunchbase
**Data related to businesses’ number of employees is taken from Linkedin
Cem regularly speaks at international technology conferences. He graduated from Bogazici University as a computer engineer and holds an MBA from Columbia Business School.
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The 10 Stupidest Tech Company Blunders
Some of the biggest high-tech deals never happened. Some of the most promising products and services never came to be. Why? Because the people and companies involved didn’t realize what they were letting slip through their fingers, or they simply couldn’t foresee what would happen afterward.
People say hindsight is 20-20. If so, our vision is acute. Here are our picks for the biggest missed opportunities in the history of technology.
1. Yahoo Loses FacebookIn 2006, Facebook was a two-year-old social network that most people thought of as a digital playground for Ivy League brats. In the world of social networks, MySpace’s 100 million members totally swamped Facebook’s 8 million. So when Yahoo offered to buy Mark Zuckerberg’s baby for a cool $1 billion–nearly twice what Rupert Murdoch had spent for MySpace in 2005–people said, “Take the money and run, Mark.” In fact, the then-23-year-old and Yahoo shook hands on a deal in June 2006.
Today, Facebook boasts some 250 million registered users and is worth roughly $5 to $10 billion, depending on who’s counting. Three years and two CEOs later, Yahoo is still struggling to survive.
2. Real Networks Punts on the iPodPeople think Steve Jobs invented the iPod. He didn’t, of course. Jobs merely said yes to engineer Tony Fadell after the folks at Real Networks rejected Fadell’s idea for a new kind of music player in the fall of 2000. (Fadell’s former employer Philips also turned him down.)
Today that content-delivery system is known as iTunes, and Apple controls some 80 percent of the digital music market. Fadell worked at, and eventually ran, Apple’s iPod division until November 2008. Real Networks is still a player in the streaming-media world, but its revenues are a fraction of what Apple makes from iTunes alone. (Photo: Courtesy of Apple)
3. Sony and Toshiba Agree to Disagree Over HDFrom 2002 onward the two sides wrangled, each signing up allies to support its own competing, incompatible format. In 2008 Sony slipped the knife into Toshiba by paying one of its biggest backers, Warner Brothers Studios, a reported $400 million to drop HD DVD in favor of Blu-ray.
The missed opportunity to come out with a single HD format sacrificed years’ worth of sales for every company involved. Had the two sides joined forces in 2002, high-def discs would be the dominant delivery medium for movies and shows now. Instead, today DVDs still outsell Blu-ray titles by ten to one, and the future belongs to streaming media and video on demand.
4. Digital Research: The Other MicrosoftThis one is a classic. In 1980, when IBM was looking for somebody to build a disc operating software for its brand-new IBM PC, Microsoft was not its first choice. In fact, none other than Bill Gates suggested that Big Blue approach Gary Kildall of Digital Research, author of the CP/M operating system.
The legend is that Kildall blew IBM off to go fly his plane. The real story is that Kildall was flying to deliver a product to another customer, leaving his wife to negotiate with IBM. Dorothy Kildall didn’t like parts of the deal IBM was proposing and sent the executives packing.
Before DOS, Microsoft’s biggest products were versions of the BASIC programming tool. After DOS, well…you know the rest. Would Microsoft have grown into the monolith it is today without the IBM contract? We’ll never know.
5. Xerox Goes in an Alto DirectionHere’s another classic tale. More than a decade before the Macintosh and Windows PCs, before even the MITS Altair, there was the Alto, the world’s first computer with a window-based graphical user interface. Invented at Xerox PARC, the Alto had a mouse, ethernet networking, and a what-you-see-is-what-you-get (WYSIWYG) text processor.
But in 1973 the personal-computer market didn’t exist, so Xerox didn’t really know what to do with the Alto. The company manufactured a few thousand units and distributed them to universities. As legend has it, in 1979 Steve Jobs visited Xerox PARC, saw the Alto, and incorporated many of the Alto’s features into Apple’s Lisa and Mac computers. Shortly thereafter Xerox finally realized its mistake and began marketing the Xerox Star, a graphical workstation based on technology developed for the Alto. But it was too little, too late.
Types And Examples Of A Special Journal
Definition of Special Journal
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This type of special journal is required in the case of manual accounting. By this method, the finalization work is eased out since the accountant of the company usually takes some care to check the posting of the special journal into the proper ledgers and thus avoids the mistakes of debit and credit while doing accounting.
Types of Special JournalVarious types of the special journal are explained below:
Cash Receipt Journal: It records all the cash receipts which are done in the company in the financial year. It is a specialized transaction that records the sales of the items, which are done using cash and when it is received.
Cash Payment Journal: It records the payments which are done by using cash. It is also a special journal that records the cash payments made to the creditors by the company in the financial year.
Purchase Journal: The purchase journal helps to record all the purchases which are made on credit in the financial year. It helps to keep a check on the orders placed.
Sales Journal: This type of journal helps to record the sales made during the year. This account keeps a track of the debtor’s balances or customer balances who purchase the items from the company and the company keeps a check whether the dues are received or not.
Examples of Special JournalA company has recorded sales for the financial year for $4,000. The company will record the same in the sales journal which is also known as a special journal. Now while recording the sales the company will create a sales invoice in the name of the company ad it will present the same before the other party on the future date when the payment is required to be made. In the year-end when the accountant will check the books of accounts the Accounts Receivable A/c will be debited with $ 4,000 and the sales will be credited with $ 4,000
The ledger of Accounts receivables will be taken care of and all the payments, if not settled by the customers, will be settled on the given dates. Thus this helps to eliminate the efforts to check all the ledgers in case of any mismatch in the books of accounts also it provides detailed information of the debtors of the company thus making it easy for the company to rely on the special journal i.e. Sales Journal.
Advantages of Special Journal
The special journal is designed in such a way that it is very helpful for the company to post the entries in the books of accounts. The accountant can get detailed information about the ledgers. The changes of getting the posting wrong are minimal to a greater extent.
The transactions of the company are recorded in the special journal and each transaction can be easily traced and checked because the entries are done on an individual basis for example the accountant will clearly mention the name of the debtors in the Account receivable A/c so that in case of the settlement the accountant can inform the higher authority regarding the payment which is still due with the customers.
A continued checking process is always there when it comes to posting the entries. When a posting is done it affects two ledgers and thus it is always checked before and after posting the transactions and so the chances of frauds and mistakes are reduced in the company.
The special journals are very useful techniques when it comes to recording transactions but it can be difficult for the accountant who has limited knowledge regarding the posting. The accounting entries in special cases can be very tedious for those who are not able to understand the accounting concepts and its double entries effect.
The company may have to hire some account experts to do the task for them for that they have to pay some extra salary to the experts and this will increase the cost to the company.
The special journal entries are very beneficial but it is also very time-consuming. Many small companies may not be willing to adopt this kind of practice.
Conclusion Recommended ArticlesEverything Announced At Nvidia’s Geforce Special Event
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Last Updated: October 14th, 2023
Hardware reveal events are generally pretty tame affairs due to the inevitable disappointment of never living up to expectations. Yet, NVIDIA’s GeForce Special Event broadcast today appeared to buck the trend with the event managing to rack up levels of excitement the likes of which we haven’t experienced in recent memory. And, that was even before the broadcast itself, aided, of course, by the anticipation riled up by months of rumors and wild speculation about the next-gen of Ampere gaming GPUs and all that they entail for PC gamers across the world.
Beamed straight from NVIDIA’s CEO Jensen Huang rather grand and swanky kitchen, the GeForce Special Event certainly delivered – three ultra-powerful GeForce RTX 30-series GPUs no less – while packing in a few other choice surprises and even a handful of exclusive game trailers to boot.
Here’s a summary of everything NVIDIA covered.
Jensen Huang hosted a live event from his kitchen last night, unveiling key information on the 30-series Ampere GPU range that had only been speculated prior. One of the most anticipated pieces of information regarding these new cards was the release dates.
RTX 3090 Release Date: September 24th
RTX 3080 Release Date: September 17th
RTX 3070 Release Date: October
We got our first glimpse of the kind of performance we can expect from these groundbreaking cards last night. Below is a first look at what we can expect from Nvidia’s new Ampere GPUs:
The RTX 3070 is set to offer the same performance as the RTX 2080Ti, at a fraction of the price.
The RTX 3080 is up to 2x the performance vs previous generation (RT scenario). The new GPUs will offer a new thermal design with a push/pull system for better air distribution.
The RT 3090 the most powerful graphics card in the world. The 3090 is up to 10 times quieter than the Titan RTX and is 30 degrees more efficient.
After showcasing what the RTX 30 series were capable of, Jensen unveiled the starting price of these hugely impressive GPUs:
RTX 3070 Price: $499
RTX 3080 Price: $699
RTX 3090 Price: $1,499
With the Ampere GPUs offering much more performance potential when compared to last generation’s offerings, we were interested to see how much more power they would require. Here’s what Nvidia had to say:
RTX Turing 20 series:
RTX 2080Ti PSU requirements: 650W
RTX 2080 PSU requirements: 650W
RTX 2070 PSU requirements: 550W
RTX Ampere 30 series:
RTX 3090 PSU requirements: 750W
RTX 3080 PSU requirements: 750W
RTX 3070 PSU requirements: 650W
As with all new releases, there’s now a large crowd of individuals scouring the net for potential pre-order options for the next RTX 30-series ampere GPUs. Whilst it isn’t fully clear whether or not you’ll be able to pre-order right now, some sources have speculated some vendors will allow you to pre-order as soon as tomorrow at 12pm.
UK Pre-order Dates: Earliest reports see retailers like Scan offering pre-order dates from September 17th
US Pre-order Dates: Some sources speculate a pre-order date as soon as September 3rd, 12 pm
CA Pre-order Dates: No new information on Canada pre-order dates
Despite the new RTX Ampere GPUs bringing a brand new thermal design to the table, third party manufacturers will still be releasing their own uniquely designed AIB cards. There isn’t a great deal of information on what’s in store from these right now, however, we are keeping bang up to date with AIB releases here.
Early RTX 30-series AIB cards:
ASUS NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 TUF GAMING
Gigabyte NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 EAGLE
Gigabyte NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 GAMING
MSI NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 GAMING X TRIO
MSI NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 VENTUS 3X
ASUS NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 TUF GAMING
Gigabyte NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 EAGLE
Gigabyte NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 GAMING
MSI NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 GAMING X TRIO
MSI NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 VENTUS 3X
Huang kick-started the show by announcing that a suite of NVIDIA graphics technologies is heading to Epic Games’ battle royale shooter, Fortnite – a custom Ray Tracing map, NVIDIA DLSS, and NVIDIA Reflex. As NVIDIA explains:
“Immersive ray-traced effects, powered by GeForce RTX’s RT Cores, dramatically improve the fidelity and detail of Fortnite’s stylized world. With NVIDIA DLSS, performance is greatly accelerated thanks to Tensor Cores, found exclusively on GeForce RTX 20 and 30 Series GPUs. And NVIDIA Reflex reduces the time it takes for your actions, like your character’s movements, to be displayed on your monitor, increasing responsiveness.”
Second on the bill was news that NVIDIA has been busy working to mitigate the ever-present issue of lag in esports games. The result being NVIDIA Reflex, a tool available for the new GeForce RTX 30-Series GPUs and G-Sync monitors that analyzes and optimizes GPUs and games to limit latency and up refresh rates to 360 Hz. NVIDIA says Reflex is designed to lower latency to 30 ms or less.
Leveraging the power of AI to transform even the most humble streaming setup into a home broadcast studio, NVIDIA Broadcast aims to level the streaming playing field. It takes run-of-the-mill webcams and microphones transforming them thanks to three core features:
Noise Removal:
Remove background noise from your microphone feed – be it a dog barking or the doorbell ringing. The AI network can even be used on incoming audio feeds to mute that one keyboard-mashing friend who won’t turn on push-to-talk.
Virtual Background:
Remove the background of your webcam feed and replace it with game footage, a replacement image, or even a subtle blur.
Auto Frame:
Zooms in on you and uses AI to track your head movements, keeping you at the center of the action even as you shift from side to side. It’s like having your own cameraperson.
NVIDIA also introduced Omniverse Machinima, a new storytelling app geared towards gamers eager to craft gameplay into compelling narratives thanks to NVIDIA AI technologies – MDL/materials, Audio to Facial Animation, Physics/VFX, and AI Pose Estimation.
While the game themselves could easily have brushed to the side in favor of NVIDIA’s fancy new pieces of kit, the GPU giant made sure to incorporate a number of titles showcasing RTX and the capabilities of the new Ampere cards, including the likes of Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War, Minecraft, and Cyberpunk 2077. Many of these will soon support RTX, NVIDIA DLSS, and the brand new NVIDIA Reflex. You can check out the glitzy new trailers just below.
Saving the best for last, CEO Huang announced three Ampere architecture-based GeForce RTX 30-Series – RTX 3070, RTX 3080, and RTX 3090. Each a beast in their own right, the three cards mark a notable improvement over the current Turing line-up with Shader, RT, and Tensor performance doubling in some instances. As NVIDIA rightly points out, the new Ampere gaming GPUs usher in a massive generational leap forward that, in many ways, epitomizes NVIDIA 20-year journey to offer the most cutting edge graphics cards on the market.
Here are the three announced GeForce RTX 30-Series GPUs alongside their key features and specifications.
RTX 3070
5,888 CUDA Cores
8 GB GDDR6 VRAM
$499
Available October
RTX 3080
8,704 CUDA Cores
10 GB GDDR6X VRAM
$699
September 17
RTX 3090
10,496 CUDA Cores
24 GB GDDR6X VRAM
$1499
September 24
And to end, the official blurb from NVIDIA:
“Powered by Ampere, NVIDIA’s 2nd gen RTX architecture, GeForce RTX 30 Series graphics cards feature faster 2nd gen Ray Tracing Cores, faster 3rd gen Tensor Cores, and new streaming multiprocessors that together bring stunning visuals, faster frame rates, and AI acceleration for gamers and creators. GeForce RTX 30 Series GPUs also feature several world firsts: they’re the first gaming-class graphics cards with up to 24GB of new, blazing-fast GDDR6X VRAM; they’re the first GPUs with HDMI 2.1, for 4K high refresh rate and 8K gaming; they’re the first discrete GPUs with support for the AV1 codec, enabling you to watch high-resolution streams using significantly less bandwidth; and our Founders Edition cards are the first with innovative dual axial flow through cooling solutions.”
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