Cover Photo Major News from LinkedIn, Hazelcast, Zendesk, and Google

LinkedIn Rolls Out Premium Company Page Subscription Featuring AI Content Creation

LinkedIn has initiated a testing phase for its new Premium Company Page subscription, targeting small and medium-sized businesses. Priced at an introductory $99.99 monthly or an annual fee of $839.88, this subscription aims to empower companies by leveraging artificial intelligence for content generation, enhancing follower growth, and providing tools to elevate their market presence. This service adds to LinkedIn’s array of premium offerings designed for various organizational needs, including job hunting, business intelligence, sales, recruitment, and professional development. March reports highlighted a 25% year-on-year growth in Premium user subscriptions, contributing $1.7 billion to the company’s $15 billion revenue in 2023. 

Zendesk Enhances Customer Experience with Advanced AI Solutions

Zendesk is revolutionizing customer service with its new AI platform, aiming to automate 10-20% of support interactions to reduce human dependency and cut costs. CEO Tom Eggemeier highlighted the transition to generative AI, enhancing AI agent effectiveness. These agents, developed with OpenAI, autonomously engage with customers and can be tailored for complex scenarios. The platform also introduces an Agent copilot, offering response suggestions to improve service efficiency. Eggemeier emphasized the importance of human touch in customer service, with AI taking over routine tasks to allow agents to focus on complex problem-solving and enhance empathy in interactions. Zendesk’s open platform supports various large language models like Amazon Bedrock and Anthropic, providing flexibility in technology choice. This underscores Zendesk’s commitment to using advanced technology for improving customer and employee interactions through AI and automation.

Google’s Bold $100 Billion AI Ambition

Google DeepMind’s CEO, Demis Hassabis, has revealed that Google’s ambition to advance to “full AI” technology could see the tech giant investing over $100 billion. This revelation came during this year’s TED Conference, where Hassabis discussed the financial magnitude of developing next-generation AI technologies. Google’s investment is poised to surpass the speculated costs of competitors’ projects, including the rumored “Stargate” computer by OpenAI and Microsoft. DeepMind, established in 2010 and acquired by Google in 2014 for upwards of $400 million, has been at the forefront of AI research. Hassabis emphasized the necessity of substantial computing power for achieving Artificial General Intelligence, suggesting that Google’s extensive computer resources give it a competitive edge. The investment primarily covers the high costs of AI equipment, highlighted by the demand for Nvidia’s H100 AI processing units, essential for developing sophisticated AI algorithms like those in OpenAI’s ChatGPT. With each unit costing around $40,000 and potential needs reaching up to 50,000 units for future developments.

Hazelcast Launches Version 5.4 to Enhance AI and Real-Time Data Processing

Hazelcast has updated its data processing platform to version 5.4, enhancing support for AI and operational workloads. This version aims to cater to the high demands of AI pipelines, serving giants like JPMorgan Chase and Volvo. CEO Kelly Herrell highlighted the platform’s evolution to support large-scale AI workloads, emphasizing the importance of efficient data processing. Key updates include an advanced CP subsystem for improved data consistency in distributed clusters, addressing the real-time data processing challenge. Hazelcast 5.4 also introduces tiered storage, enabling scalable storage solutions for the massive data volumes of AI/ML workloads. This feature supports real-time data processing applications like credit card fraud detection, where Hazelcast processes six ML algorithms within a 50-millisecond window for rapid authorization decisions. With these enhancements, Hazelcast strengthens its role in enabling enterprises to leverage AI for efficient, real-time decision-making.