AstraZeneca and Oracle team up on AI to find patients for drug trials
AstraZeneca and Oracle team up on AI to find patients for drug trials

AstraZeneca and Oracle will use AI and real patient health data to find people for drug trials faster, the two firms announced. The deal adds to a long list of AI health tie-ups between drugmakers and tech companies. The pair signed a non-binding term …

Kroger will cut 37% of its corporate workforce as it leans on technology
Kroger will cut 37% of its corporate workforce as it leans on technology

“Our company has more layers, more handoffs and more overhead than we need, so we are addressing this issue.” Kroger chief executive Greg Foran wrote this in a memo to staff on Monday, 12 October. The US supermarket chain will cut about 3,000 corporate…

Accenture caps staff Claude spending at $29 a month, 404 Media reports
Accenture caps staff Claude spending at $29 a month, 404 Media reports

“Providing a WBS and obtaining a license does not guarantee indefinite or ongoing access to Claude.” Accenture gave its staff that warning in an internal announcement about Claude, Anthropic’s AI model. The consulting firm now pays only $29 a month per…

UiPath’s Michael Atalla on AI slop, junior jobs and a Shaolin monk’s advice
UiPath’s Michael Atalla on AI slop, junior jobs and a Shaolin monk’s advice

UiPath’s marketing team has stopped paying outside firms to pull together its advertising data. The head of its paid media team built an AI agent on UiPath’s own platform instead, chief marketing officer Michael Atalla told TNW. It collects the data, a…

Anthropic signs CrowdStrike, Hitachi and 9 more to defend power and water
Anthropic signs CrowdStrike, Hitachi and 9 more to defend power and water

Anthropic will give its frontier Claude models, engineers and threat research to the companies that guard critical infrastructure. That means power grids, water utilities and transport networks. The Critical Infrastructure Defense Program is the first …

Goldman’s Marco Argenti says AI turns developers into managers of managers
Goldman’s Marco Argenti says AI turns developers into managers of managers

Goldman Sachs is entering a third phase of AI adoption, in which the goal moves from saving money to making it, the bank’s chief information officer Marco Argenti said. He spoke with Bloomberg anchor Tom Mackenzie at Wave by Vento in Turin on Friday, i…

SAP’s Sean Kask: software firms must become AI companies or perish
SAP’s Sean Kask: software firms must become AI companies or perish

Established software companies have to rebuild their products around AI, not add it as one more feature, SAP’s chief AI strategy officer Sean Kask said. He spoke at Wave by Vento in Turin on Thursday. “Like the famous quip that every company is becomin…

Miro CEO says companies must redesign work around AI, not bolt it on
Miro CEO says companies must redesign work around AI, not bolt it on

Miro co-founder and chief executive Andrey Khusid says adding AI to existing teams and processes will not deliver its full productivity gains. Companies need to redesign how work happens from the ground up, he said. He spoke at Wave by Vento in Turin o…

‘When everyone’s responsible, no one is’: the AI champion problem
‘When everyone’s responsible, no one is’: the AI champion problem

Find a champion. Protect 20% of their time. Wait for it to spread. One of the people in the room with me had run that play before, in the era of robotic process automation. Their leadership agreed to protect 20% of an AI champion’s time. A month later,…

At a private AI retreat, the vendor told us the tool won’t save you
At a private AI retreat, the vendor told us the tool won’t save you

Grady Sokaras, Zapier’s head of sales, opened a session at the company’s private AI retreat with a line about the kind of product Zapier sells. “A tool is never the solution,” Sokaras said. A company that buys the product and expects a transformation g…