Enterprise Weekly #460: AI vs. The People, The Future of Cloud Networking, and More
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While we often talk about AI's future enterprise use cases and impact, this week, it hit the mainstream…and the public isn’t too happy.
Klarna now claims its AI app-based assistants are doing the equivalent work of 700 full-time agents thanks to the partnership with OpenAI it formed last year. While positive for the company’s bottom line - they expect to improve profits by $40M this year in preparation for an IPO - some speculate the assistants aren’t as revolutionary as Klarna is making them out to be, while others are fearful about AI taking over jobs given the company laid off roughly the same number of employees (~10% of its staff) in 2022.
Wendy’s announced it would introduce something called “dynamic pricing” that will make AI-enabled price changes on digital menu boards based on demand. While this sounds similar to Uber’s surge pricing system and caused burger lovers everywhere to take their disdain to social media (examples here and here), Wendy’s promises this feature will promote discounts (not “surges”). Sounds like it was just a poor marketing move.
On the Work-Bench front:
We’re excited to announce that our portfolio company Catalyst has merged with Totango! By combining the deep enterprise capabilities of Totango with the data-driven approach of Catalyst, this unified solution will be a next-generation customer success powerhouse that revolutionizes the post-sales motion. We are honored to have been part of the Catalyst journey with co-founders Edward Chiu and Kevin Chiu since 2018, and we couldn’t be more thrilled for the Catalyst team in this next chapter of scaling a market-defining company. Read more in TechCrunch 🚀
Priyanka also published her latest Data Source substack on the future of the cloud networking ecosystem. This includes her perspective on the current pain points in the cloud networking market, the emergence (and failed promise) of service mesh, and the rise of eBPF and why it's poised to fill in gaps left by legacy solutions. Subscribe and read it here.
Lastly, next Friday, the Work-Bench team will be offline traveling. So you can catch the next Enterprise Weekly the following week (Friday, 3/15).
📚 Read more news:
CNBC: Snowflake Says Frank Slootman Is Retiring As CEO, Stock Plunges More Than 20%
Fortune: How 10 Top PE Firms Are Performing As Sky-High Tech Prices From 2021 Fall Back To Earth
TechCrunch: Fintech Giant Stripe’s Valuation Spikes To $65B In Employee Stock-Sale Deal
The Information: Venture Debt Was Supposed To Dry Up After SVB. Instead, Competition Increased.
📚 Read more (th)reads:
Company: Spring Health
Role: Director of Communications and PR
Technology: Mental Healthcare
Funding: $371M from Work-Bench, Northzone, Rethink, Kinnevik, Tiger Global
🌟 Company of the Week 🌟
Codified raises $4M led by Madrona Ventures and Vine Ventures
Data / AI / Machine Learning • Seed • Seattle, WA
Founder: Yatharth Gupta (CEO)
BlueBean raises $1.3M led by Tola Capital
Future of Work • Seed • Boston, MA
Enkrypt AI raises $2.4M led by Boldcap
Risk / Security • Seed • Boston, MA
Myko raises $2.7M led by Khosla Ventures
Sales / Marketing • Seed • Miami, FL
Finpilot raises $4M led by Madrona
Data / AI / Machine Learning • Seed • Seattle, WA
Pimberly raises $5.1M led by NPIF – Mercia Equity Finance and Northern Venture Capital Trusts
Sales / Marketing • Venture • Manchester, United Kingdom
Gradial raises $5.4M led by Madrona Ventures
Sales / Marketing • Seed • Seattle, WA
Prowler raises $6M led by Decibel VC
Risk / Security • Seed • San Francisco, CA
Slice raises $7M led by TLV Partners
HR Tech • Seed • Tel Aviv, Israel
Flexnode raises $9M led by Zacua Ventures
Data / AI / Machine Learning • Seed • Bethesda, MD
NLX raises $12M led by Cercano
Data / AI / Machine Learning • Series A • New York, NY
Tracksuit raises $13.5M led by Altos Ventures and Footwork
Sales / Marketing • Series A • Auckland, New Zealand
Filigran raises $16M led by Accel
Risk / Security • Series A • Paris, France
Heyflow raises $16M led by Singular
Sales / Marketing • Series A • Hamburg, Germany
Intenseye raises $64M led by Lightspeed Venture Partners
Future of Work • Series B • New York, NY
Glean raises $200M led by Kleiner Perkins and Lightspeed Venture Partners
Data / AI / Machine Learning • Series D • Palo Alto, CA
Octopus Deploy acquires Codefresh for $28M
Infrastructure / Dev Tools • Acquisition • Mountain View, CA
First Advantage acquires Sterling Check for $2.2B
HR Tech • Acquisition • Independence, OH
Summit acquires Deft for an Undisclosed Amount
Infrastructure / Dev Tools • Acquisition • Elk Grove Village, IL
Intapp acquires delphai for an Undisclosed Amount
Data / AI / Machine Learning • Acquisition • Berlin, Germany