Netflix

Netflix is the world’s leading internet television network with 104 million members in over 190 countries enjoying more than 125 million hours of TV shows and movies per day, including original series, documentaries and feature films. Members can watch as much as they want, anytime, anywhere, on nearly any internet-connected screen. Members can play, pause and resume watching, all without commercials or commitments.

Netflix is about the freedom of on-demand and the fun of binge viewing. It's about the flexibility of any screen at any time. It's about a personal experience that finds for each person the most pleasing titles from around the world. To deliver this experience to members, Netflix expects to spend over $1 billion on technology & development in 2017.

Amazon

Amazon Machine Learning is a service that makes it easy for developers of all skill levels to use machine learning technology. Amazon Machine Learning provides visualization tools and wizards that guide you through the process of creating machine learning (ML) models without having to learn complex ML algorithms and technology. 

Amazon Machine Learning is highly scalable and can generate billions of predictions daily, and serve those predictions in real-time and at high throughput. With Amazon Machine Learning, there is no upfront hardware or software investment, and you pay as you go, so you can start small and scale as your application grows.

WebMD

WebMD is an online publisher of heath and well-being news and information. WebMD blends expertise in journalism, content creation, community services, expert commentary, and medical review to give users a variety of ways to find what they are looking for. It combines credible information, supportive communities, and in-depth reference material about health subjects that matter to users. 

The WebMD Medical Team works closely with a team of over 100 nationwide doctors and health experts across a broad range of specialty areas to ensure WebMD's content is up to date, accurate, and helps users live a healthier life. WebMD is a source for original and timely health information as well as material from well known content providers.

Smart Patients

Smart Patients is an online community, launched by Google's ex-Chef Health Strategist, for patients and families affected by a variety of illnesses. On Smart Patients users can learn about scientific developments related to their conditions, share questions and concerns with other members, and use what they learn in the context of their own life. Smart Patients taps into the knowledge networks created by engaged patients, an underutilized resource in health care, which improves the care users seek out and receive. 

The free website lets users share insights about personal treatment experiences, discuss breaking science, and search for clinical trials. Smart Patients supports conversation across traditional disease boundaries, like when patients with different cancers are talking about the same drugs or molecular pathways. 

InnoCentive

InnoCentive is a crowdsourcing company that accepts by commission research and development problems in engineering, computer science, math, chemistry, life sciences, physical sciences, and business. InnoCentive offers a comprehensive suite of externally and internally-focused programs, providing the methodology, technology, expert support network for organizations to solve problems faster, with less risk and at a lower cost.

InnoCentive helps organizations augment their team of problem solvers with a diverse array of star players. It untethers the search for solutions from an individual, department or company and pluralizes the problem-solving process. The online platform allows corporations, governments, and nonprofits to take advantage of flexible programs geared towards finding optimal results and fresh perspectives.

GLG

Gerson Lehrman Group (GLG) is an American expert network that operates a membership-based platform that provides independent ad-hoc consulting services to business professionals around the world. GLG's network is comprised of more than 500,000 thought leaders and practitioners, including business leaders, scientists, academics, former public sector leaders, and the foremost subject matter specialists. 

GLG’s industry-leading compliance framework allows clients to learn in a structured, auditable, and transparent way, consistent with their own internal compliance obligations and the highest professional ethical standards. These compliance standards are a major competitive differentiator and key component of the company’s culture.

American Express Open Forum

American Express OPEN Forum is a branded blog, which is considered a gold standard for content marketing. American Express OPEN Forum was created with the sole purpose of helping small businesses succeed. This wasn’t because American Express decided to develop an altruistic mission. They were simply farsighted enough to see how the success of small businesses would, in turn, benefit them.

Realizing the potential impact this could have, American Express researched to find a need of small business owners and found that over half of customers needed social media education. While a lot has changed in terms of this need, the fundamental strategy of providing solutions for their customers' needs has stayed true. Today, the platform offers insights and resources dedicated exclusively to the success of small business owners. Additionally, the forum facilitates discussion between small business owners.

Angie’s List

Angie's List is an online directory that allows users to read and publish crowd-sourced reviews of local businesses and contractors. Angie's List members grade companies using a report-card-style scale, which ranges from A to F; these ratings are based on the following criteria: price, quality, responsiveness, punctuality and professionalism. Each company has its own page, which is composed of a description of its business along with the customer reviews. The aggregate grade is drawn from the combined reviews and grades given to the businesses from the consumers.

Home Advisor

HomeAdvisor is a website and mobile app provider that lists prescreened and customer-rated service professionals for home improvement, repair and maintenance projects. HomeAdvisor's marketplace lets homeowners view average project costs using a True Cost Guide, find local home professionals and instantly book appointments online. The website also has tools, products, and resources for home improvement, maintenance, and repair. 

Amenity Analytics

Amenity Analytics is a text analytics platform that allows customers to identify actionable signals from unstructured data. The company offers open data source architecture and cloud-based computing. The Amenity Analytics process combines machine learning, sentiment analysis, and predictive analytics to produce high levels of accuracy.

The platform empowers financial markets participants and business professionals across a variety of industries, to analyze market trends, manage risk and inform better investment decisions. As business professionals struggle under the weight of information overload, the product suite offers companies a unified view of information from internal and external sources, enabling new insights and promotion more informed decision making. 

Noodle

Noodle Analytics develops enterprise artificial intelligence solutions for collaboration among business executives, process experts, and artificial intelligence technologies. The company provides its solutions to solve complex business challenges and drive improvements in the areas of business process optimization, artificial intelligence technologies, human-centered design, east-west collaboration, and global agile methods, as well as customer, product, and enterprise operations. 

Noodle is pioneering the application of artificial intelligence to fundamental business challenges like demand prediction, pricing, supply chain, customer engagement, and industrial operations. The Graphics Process Unit architecture decreases the amount of time that learning algorithms need to be trained properly, allowing and its clients-to assimilate even more data into time-sensitive predictions.

Baidu/DuerOS

DuerOS is an artificial intelligence platform developed by Chinese search giant Baidu. The conversation-based intelligence platform provides development tools and skill kits for developers looking to quickly build intelligent devices that anyone can interact with primarily through voice and natural language conversation.The goal of DuerOS is to become the fundamental operating framework for every conversational device, essentially creating the "Android" for the AI era.

Voice recognition is the first step toward ‘waking up' devices and building human-to-machine interaction. Baidu's voice recognition technology now has a 97 percent accuracy rate. Baidu also has advanced microphone functionalities, echo cancellation, voice ‘wake-up' and face recognition technologies, which, when accompanied with voice recognition technology, boost user experience across the board, whether in their home, on their cell phone or in the car.

Algorithmia

Algorithmia is an online library of state of the art algorithms created by developers, for developers. The library powered by a community of world class developers, researchers, and organizations and is discoverable and accessible to everyone. The platform strives to make applications smarter by building a community around building smarter applications.

Algorithmia wants to advance the development, discovery, and accessibility of algorithmic intelligence. The platform is building a marketplace for algorithms in the world, available through a simple, scalable API. More than 45,000 developers have access to the growing library of 3,500+ algorithmic microservices. 

Google Assistant

Google Assistant is an intelligent personal assistant developed by Google. Google Assistant uses a natural language user interface to answer questions, make recommendations, and perform actions by delegating requests to a set of web services. Along with answering user-initiated queries, Google Assistant proactively delivers information to users that it predicts (based on their search habits) they may want. Unlike Apple's assistant app Siri, which sources its information from specific websites, Google Assistant sources its information from any website deemed relevant.

Amazon Echo

Amazon Echo is a smart speaker developed by Amazon, which connects to the voice controlled intelligent personal assistant service Alexa. The device is capable of voice interaction, music playback, making to-do lists, setting alarms, streaming podcasts, playing audiobooks, and providing weather, traffic and other real time information. It can also control several smart devices using itself as a home automation hub.

Cubic

Cubic is an AI app, which enables users to control their smart home via voice command, dashboard and automation. It allows users to speak in a natural way so they don't have to learn commands or device names. The dashboard makes it easy to check the user's home status and control it remotely. Users can also set schedules, rules and routines to control their homes automatically. 

Pear

Pear is a virtual energy assistant, which manages utilities and simplifies people's lives by taking away the chores of running a business using virtual assistants and artificial intelligence. Pear checks energy bills for billing errors, alerts users when there is a better rate plan, or if a relevant rebate or incentive for improvement is available.

Pear also monitors energy usage, gives regular reports for a site or group of sites and compares sites to show which are doing well and which need improvement. 

Robots

Pepper

Pepper is a human-shaped robot. He is kindly, endearing and surprising. Pepper was designed to be a genuine day-to-day companion, whose number one quality is his ability to perceive emotions. Pepper is the first humanoid robot capable of recognizing the principal human emotions and adapting his behavior to the mood of his interlocutor. To date, more than 140 SoftBank Mobile stores in Japan are using Pepper as a new way of welcoming, informing and amusing their customers.

Planet Money: When India's Cash Disappeared

Last November, India's Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, made a move that brought India's economy to its knees. Modi said, starting on November 9th, most of the country's paper money would no longer be legal tender. This is a policy known as demonetization. Modi said India needed it because of "black money," which is money outside the tax system. He said, criminals and tax evaders hoarding stacks of cash would be stuck. Everyone else would be better off.

People spent hours in line waiting at the bank to change their old worthless bills into a new ones. Some people died in those lines. Businesses went bankrupt because people couldn't buy anything. But, demonetization wasn't just the Prime Minister's idea. It all stems back to a PowerPoint presentation from a man known as Guru Uncle, Anil Bokil.He says he's on a spiritual quest to fix India's economy. The country's money will never be the same again.